The news that footballers get paid a lot of money shouldn’t come as an almighty shock to anyone. it used to be that £100k a week was reserved for the best in the world, now it seems like a normal salary to dish out to a promising young player.
Former Spurs midfielder Jamie O’Hara had been speaking on Talksport about the dangers of getting so much money at a young age, he even called for there to be a cap on the wages young players could earn.
To be fair to him, this kind of comment usually comes from a bitter ex pro who missed out on making a lot of money from the game. O’Hara was quite open about earning £60k a month when he broke through at Spurs so he knows what it’s like to earn a lot of money as a youngster.
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His comments were in reaction to Callum Hudson-Odoi signing a big new contract at Chelsea. The story on Talksport suggested the Chelsea youngster was earning as much as £180k a week with his new deal.
Speaking about the new contract O’Hara said: “At 18 years of age, there’s no way in a million years that man knows how to use that much money – you just don’t.”
He also talked about how he managed his own funds: “I was silly with my money, I threw it away. I did silly things, bought cars, bought things I didn’t need. With that sort of money everything is accessible and as a young kid you want to enjoy it.”
The problem is you can’t really blame Chelsea for this. He’s one of their top young players and his contract was coming to an end, if they didn’t agree to pay that wage another club would’ve. It’s a situation that football has developed with players having so much power and being able to demand huge wages.
The idea of a wage cap is an interesting one, but realistically you would need every FA in the world to sign up to it or it wouldn’t work. Otherwise certain places would be able to attract all the best players in the world by paying more than everyone else.