Eurosport - Wed, 07 Jan 13:06:00 2009
Manchester City's hugely wealthy owner Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan has toppled Roman Abramovich to head British football's rich list.
Sheikh Mansour, a member of the royal family of Abu Dhabi, has a personal fortune of £15 billion according to the football rich list, researched and published by FourFourTwo magazine.
The 38-year-old bought City in the summer, while Abramovich, Chelsea's Russian owner, has slipped to third in the list - his wealth is estimated at £7bn and he has been said to have lost over £3bn in the economic downturn.
He has also been overtaken in the list by Lakshmi Mittal, the 58-year-old Indian industrialist worth £12.5bn who joined Formula One's Bernie Ecclestone and Flavio Briatore investing in Queen's Park Rangers.
David Beckham remains the richest player associated with British football - his personal fortune of £125m being streets ahead of his closest rivals Michael Owen (£40m) and Wayne Rooney (£35m).
Beckham is 38th in the overall list, while England head coach Fabio Capello is at number 73 worth an estimated £25m with a £6m-a-year contract and a £10m private art collection.
Manchester United boss Sir Alex Ferguson is at number 78 in the list (£22m) and Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger at number 92 (£14m).
Celtic shareholder Dermot Desmond, the Irish entrepreneur, is the richest person in Scottish football - he is eighth on the list and said to be worth £1.2bn. Rangers chairman Sir David Murray is 19th on the list, worth £600m.
Despite the huge fortunes of the wealthiest owners, football finance experts fear British football's bubble may be about to burst.
Professor Tom Cannon told the magazine: "Season-ticket numbers will probably be down by about 10 per cent but renewals will be down by at least 15 or 20 per cent. That's where the problems will be as you go down the divisions."
Rich List Top 20:
1 Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan (Man City) £15bn
2 Lakshmi Mittal and family (QPR) £12.5bn
3 Roman Abramovich (Chelsea) £7bn
4 Joe Lewis (Tottenham) £2.5bn
5 Bernie and Slavica Ecclestone (QPR) £2.4bn
6 Stanley Kroenke (Arsenal) £2.245bn
7 Alisher Usmanov (Arsenal) £1.5bn
8= Lord Grantchester & the Moores Family (Everton) £1.2bn
8= Dermot Desmond (Celtic) £1.2bn
10= Lord Ashcroft (Watford) £1.1bn
10= Malcolm Glazer and family (Man Utd) £1.1bn
12 Simon Keswick (Cheltenham) £966m
13 Trevor Hemmings (Preston) £900m
14 Mike Ashley (Newcastle) £800m
15 Randy Lerner (Aston Villa) £750m
16 Tom Hicks (Liverpool) £700m
17 The Walker Family (Blackburn) £660m
18 Mohammed Al Fayed (Fulham) £650m
19 Sir David Murray (Rangers) £600m
20 Steve Morgan (Wolves) £400m
Top 20 players (overall position in the main list in brackets):
1 David Beckham £125m (38)
2 Michael Owen £40m (56=)
3 Wayne Rooney £35m (61)
4= Rio Ferdinand £28m (69=)
4= Robbie Fowler £28m (69=)
4= Sol Campbell £28m (69=)
7 Ryan Giggs £23m (77)
8= Michael Ballack £20m (80=)
8= Frank Lampard £20m (80=)
10 Steven Gerrard £19m (86)
11 Cristiano Ronaldo £18m (87)
12 John Terry £17m (88)
13 Didier Drogba £15m (89)
14= Nicolas Anelka £14m (92=)
14= Damien Duff £14m (92=)
16= Dimitar Berbatov £13m (96=)
16= Ashley and Cheryl Cole £13m (96=)
16= Fernando Torres £13m (96=)
19 = Emile Heskey £12m (100)
20 Gary Neville £11.75m (101)
Comment 41 - 60 of 60
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what numbers are nigeria player in english f.a.
JACOBHARRIS999 IS A PRO FOOTBALLER SO PLEASE BE SURE TO RELATE TO HIM IN THAT FASHION, HE SUGGESTS THAT FOOTBALLERS SHOULD GET THESE MASSIVE AMOUNTS, JACOBHARRIS999 LISTEN YOU GREADY PARASITE OF THIS WORLD, THE LARGE REVENUE'S GAINED IN THE PREMIRE LEAGURE SHOULD GO TO GRASS ROUTES FOOTBALL WHICH IS LACKING THE INVESTMENT YOU C*&T. EVERYONE WHO WANTS FOOTBALL TO REMAIN A GREAT SPORT IN ENGLAND SHOULD EMAIL YAHOO AND HAVE THIS SCUM BAG BANNED, WE DON'T WANT WHAT HAPPENED IN ITALY A FEW YEARS BACK TO HAPPEN HEAR, JACOBHARRIS99 THROW YOURSELF OFF A BRIDGE AS YOU ARE A WASTE OF HUMAN LIFE.
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The last paragraph in your last post is interesting (JacobH) and for me it sums it all up beautifully.
' if you think players are being paid too much, you need to provide a solution as to where the money goes '
Errrr, may i step forward and suggest this radical gem - the money goes to the millions upon millions of people whom have been left to fight hard every day for the survival of them and their children in the shade of lady luck. Really the fact that this point hasn't even been bought up is the saddest thing of all - the idea of any corperation giving surplus profit to charity in this sick day and age is laughable isn't it? Or maybe just for people that lack honesty and decency.
The thing is Jacob, your missing the point. You can give us as many sums as you like, none of which make a difference. Its the injustice of it all that bugs people. We all get one shot at life, and some people get to spend theirs scratching around never having any security often trying to raise children and find the time to enjoy their depressing exsitences. Then we have fat Frank Lampard in the papers feeling hurt that Chelsea won't give the extra £10,000 a week he feels he is worth in the current market (on top of his £100,000 a week of course). Its sick. Its grossly unjust. And if Lampard really did spit out his dummy over not getting an extra £10k a week then he is a complete disgrace for not even having the common decency to realise that outside his bloated West London exsistence people are sleeping on the streets or trying to scrape enough money to take their kids to Devon for a week.
The fact that you are trying to defend their sick wage packets by claiming they retire at 35 and 'are unable to work in any other field' makes you weird and extremely stupid. What about someone who was deprived an education due to uncaring or abusive parents? What do they do for work without any education? Wheres there multimillion pound Swiss saving account to keep them alive like your precious footballers have? Your right about one thing - if a business (such as Man Utd which in years gone by was actually refered to as a club but never mind) is earning all this money a year then once they have paid their overheads they have a right to pay their employees (or players) the rest. The sick thing is this happens to be tens of millions, and whats sicker is that this is precisly what the clubs do. This article will always make moral people feel a bit sick and saddned. So maybe you lack morals Jacob.
men they deserve 2 be paid
some of you are so narrow minded! footballers get paid the amount they do as it is a fair distribution of the wealth in their area.. let me ellaborate, take old trafford, capacity of 76000 and an average season ticket price of about £700, this equals £53 200 000 a year generated from tickets, their deal with AIG is worth 56 million over 4 years which is £14 million a year. so they have £67 million a year solely from ticket sales, and their main sponsorship. (take note that we are not including any other sponsors of which there are many, their prize money, and more importantly, any of the money they receive from television rights, or from advertising on their own channel during football games. if you divide this money between 15 main squad players it works out at 4.5 million a year each. No one can argue that this is not fair, apart from the players and the mannager and a few other backroom staff, who else should the money go to, It is inevitable that there is this much money in football, as it is so popular, As it is so popular it is a perfect platform for advertisment. (companies want to advertise their product on a football game as they know that they are garunteed a large audience)
If you are suggesting that footballers are paid too much, you have to provide a solution as to where the money should go if it is not to the players. Proposing giving more of the money to the club itself would be counter productive as it would merely make the richer clubs even richer, thus creating even greater hyper inflation in the player transfer market. (some clubs would be able to price every other club out of the market)
Where is Walcott & Adebayor on the list? The list is defected. Re-present.
Where is Walcott on the list? The list is defected. Re-present.
i truly envy the footballers but Jacobhariss, it's so funny that you think they deserve more cos they retire early. Retiring @age 35 does not mean u can\t do anything else. or are they so stupid? some of them must have gone to sch or have investment somewhere, i wish i can marry 1 even if it's for 12 months.
a footballer gets paid 50 times a year more than any other technician. if they retire 25 years before anyone else, every year they played, earned them 50 years of a normal person! Only a brain dead cannot work out that in 1 and half years he will get the same amount of everyone else will roughly get, when retiring at 65 or so. the other 17.5 years of getting 50 years of wages in one. that would give them extra 850 years of normal person wages in retirement. just in case they run out of money for having a short employment. all the brain deads who want to justify footballers wages on the short employment hopefully their brain is good enough to understand this
JACOBHARRIS.ARE YOU WIRED UP PROPERLY SON.IF A FOOTBALLER AT THE AGE OF 20 IS ON £100 GRAND A WEEK TILL HES 35 THATS £5.2 MILLION A YEAR, TIMES 15.ISNT THAT ENOUGH TO RETIRE ON.JACOBHARRIS=MUG+MUPPET
Just like an average civil servant will get retired someday after his service since he can't work for the rest of his life till age 90, so do footballers plays until age 35 or lil bit more and actors does till even 70s, So whats the different? I'm not against players getting paid heavily, but it's not justified doctors, engineers, and other highly professional skills been paid less.
How about Brucie then? don't you think he deserves a knighthood, He is as good at entertaining as Manchester United but he doesn't get paid £1000,000 a week and I think he should the way he dances and tells really funny jokes, he makes me laugh as much as some of the comments on this page.
Footballers have a relatively short footballing life so good luck to them if they earn lots of money. If you don't like paying their wages don't go to watch them. The wages would soon go down then!
a senator from my country went to ivory coast before, and as he arrived at the airport, he was ushered by government officials to a rest lounge to relax. they passed by a more luxurious looking lounge, so he asked the official, "what's that room for?". the official answered, "that is the VVIP lounge, reserved only for kings, presidents and didier drogba...". true story.
jacobharris, dunno why u really going all out to defend the footballers...you're making the point that they retire at age 35 so they deserve a lot? what, will they become so helpless and are they really stupid that at age 35, after football, they can't do anything else to earn a living? you are a joke, sir...
Jacobh -- you are a tool.........
To peterlynch, post6, Didier Drogba was born in Africa.
To Emmanuel A, post 10, Drogba is well aware of the poverty there. He is a United Nations ambassador who spends a lot of time and money in Africa trying to improve conditions. The people of the Ivory Coast don't begrudge him his good fortune, just the opposite. He is a national hero there.
to Peter H i think you don't understand the point. so i will explain it simply for you. they retire at the age of 35 and this means they have no job, and therefore no income from that day. If they were to earn as you suggest 100 000 a year untill 35. for example lets say this is from the age of 20. this would give them total earnings of 1 £500 000. Lets say (very nievely that they have only spent £750000 (giving them one sports car, and an average- nice house) they now have £750 000 to live on until the age of 90, which as fit men you would expect them to live to. this is 55 years. £ 750 000 for 55 years. Lets be generous and say that they have been clever with their money and made the £750 000 into £ 1 million. This would give them an annual salary of £ 18181.8 hardly a salary which you could expect one of the top sportsmen in the world to survive on. Does this make it any clearer to you Peter as to why they earn the salaries that they do. You cannot question the fact that they deserve a higher than average standard of living.
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