Calcio Debate: Only Money Between England & Italy

It is often said that "money equals power, and when you have the power you have the success." Such a statement can be applied to anything in life but when you put it in football terms, it could not be more true. A colleague of mine recently wrote a piece on the wealth of Serie A footballers, highlighting the massive gap between the high earners at top clubs and those on a lesser income with the average Italian side. Football is, of course, a world game and taking a look further away from Italy, the same argument can be used to show the dominance of English teams in the Champions League compared to that of their continental neighbours. Chelsea and Manchester United will dispute the final in the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow on May 21, and it's little surprise then that seven of the 12 most paid players in the world, according to an article in the Daily Telegraph last month, play for either side.
Here's the list: Wages Per Week

1 Kaka / AC Milan / £143,438
2 Ronaldinho / FC Barcelona / £135,788
3 Frank Lampard / Chelsea FC / £130,050
4 John Terry / Chelsea / FC £130,050
5 Fernando Torres / Liverpool FC / £126,225
6 Andriy Shevchenko / Chelsea / £124,313
7 Michael Ballack / Chelsea / £124,313
8 Cristiano Ronaldo / Manchester United FC / £122,400
9 Thierry Henry / FC Barcelona / £122,400
10 Steven Gerrard / Liverpool / £122,400
11 Didier Drogba / Chelsea FC / £117,619
12 Wayne Rooney / Manchester United FC / £116,663

These figures show that Manchester United are pacing themselves beautifully with Chelsea when it comes to players wages, and when you look at them in the Premier League standings, as well as the UCL, you can instantly see the correlation that money equals success. Lets take a look back at the semi-finals of this year's Champions League, and aside from Kaka (the only Serie A player in the world's top 20 highest earning players), all the best paid footballers in the list belong to one of the four clubs who played in those games. As a side-point, when you consider that Darren Bent, the 19th highest paid player in the world, earns more money than any player in Serie A, with the exception of Kaka, the picture couldn't be any clearer (Sol Campbell is 16th by the way). Roman Abrahamovic paid some £300m for his talented squad of high earners but the money was a good investment as Chelsea have reached the Champions League final for the first time in their history. Before the Russian Oligarch came to West London to stamp his authority and wave his money clenching fists, it's fair to say that Chelsea were never going to really make a serious assault on Europe's premier club competition. But it's not just about the players though, take a look at the richest club lists and once again there is a similar pattern. Manchester United are the richest club in the world and as of April 30th 2008, the Red Devils were valued at £1.8 billion, closely followed by Real Madrid, Arsenal, Liverpool and Bayern Munich. Again, four of the top five richest clubs are from the Premier League, which again in theory could explain the English dominance on the continental stage. It's a shame then that the England national side is not a club, if they were they would probably be in the Euros. Italy's Champions League hopefuls failed this year, and it could be argued that it was down to a lack of finances compared to their English counterparts. Milan are the sixth richest club with Roma and Inter both 11th and 14th respectively, all three clubs failed miserably against English opposition both on the pitch and in the high earning, high rolling stakes. So what has football come to? There seems to be a very bleak picture for the club game as a whole. The teams are literally buying trophies rather than playing for them. It's all money, money, money. Football in England has lost the values of sport but it has gained values on the business front with TV rights, bumper sponsorship deals and match day revenues ensuring that shareholders and fans of the bigger sides are kept happy whilst the supporters of the lesser clubs have to face the stark reality that unless billionaire foreign owners come along and invest, their clubs will just never be able to compete with the big boys. It's this kind of money equals success trend which is wiping away the true values of the game in England and slowly it's having an impact on the continent. The top 20 richest clubs are all from England, Spain, Italy and Germany, with only Olympique Lyonnais representing France. How about the rest of the continent? Let's not forget, football is a world game and everyone should be entitled to fight for major honours such as the Champions League. What ever happened to Red Star Belgrade and Steaua Bucharest who were once upon a time European Champions? There was once a level playing field where we would often see a real challenge from a less affluent side. But with the gulf in wealth between top clubs and the rest always increasing, it's fair to say that we will never see a challenge from teams who cannot compete financially with Premiership sides such as Manchester United and Chelsea.