The first billion pound player?

antsmithmk

Hates women.
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Feb 11, 2014
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Given the current rate of increase of the record transfer fee, it's highly likely the first ever billion pound player is alive somewhere on planet earth right now.

Or will the bubble burst before then?
 
I'm 44, in my lifetime assuming I go on for another 45 years,no chance.
 
Not sure about the first billion pound player but am pretty sure the first billion pound window will be involving some combination of Pep + Oil
 
Unless Man City activate Neymar's or Messi's buyout clause, I really don't see it ever happening.

Apart from PSG and Man City, every other club in the world is still thinking hard about breaking the £100 million barrier, never mind £200 million.

I think we'll start to see one market for those clubs where any player they try to buy automatically gets £50 million added onto their value, and another more realistic market for the other clubs.
 
antsmithmk said:
Given the current rate of increase of the record transfer fee, it's highly likely the first ever billion pound player is alive somewhere on planet earth right now.

Or will the bubble burst before then?
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No it's not.
 
The thing is, there is a saturation point being reached. Clubs no longer worry about mundane overheads like electricity bills, general staffing costs (security, catering ect), ground maintenance, travel costs ect ect.

All clubs are financially secure but for player and manager wages and transfer fees. That wasn't the case 10/15 years ago. That's why clubs like Southampton can tell Liverpool to feck off with £60m+ bids for defenders.
 
It is quite possible to be able to build a model to calculate when it is likely to happen as long as there isn't any huge changes in the global economy.

Technically, one can correlate the spread of the game into different markets with the rise in transfer fees (because the latter should be related to commercail income). The income from matchgoing fans is bounded and either way is a small chunk of revenues. Once the correlation is established, the question is how many markets have football not exploited properly yet and how do we measure how much money can still come from those markets. That can probably be approximated because it is correlated to the increase in wealth in the new markets (size of the middle class and wealthy).

There is still money to be made in the Americas, Africa, and Asia.

And it is completely false to correlate the transfer fee with talent. All you have to be is the best player currently available. The benchmark is not transfers from previous eras because the inflation is too quick to allow that. (i.e. the best player in the world in 2025 might not be as good as Neymar but will probably cost more, if he moves)
 
My opinion is that at some point, clubs will have to inflate ticket prices and TV companies will have to inflate subscription prices in order to maintain the financial growth in football.

Unfortunately, the average working man is poor at the moment and economy is bad. There is a limit to the amount people are willing to fork out to watch football. Cross that limit people will stop going to matches, cancel Sky subscriptions and so on and so forth. Once average Joe decides he doesn't want to pay £5000 for his season ticket or £200 a month for his Sky/BT subscription or £200 for a replica jersey, global fellowship will fall and the trend will be reversed. We are not far off that scenario.
 
spiriticon said:
My opinion is that at some point, clubs will have to inflate ticket prices and TV companies will have to inflate subscription prices in order to maintain the financial growth in football.

Unfortunately, the average working man is poor at the moment and economy is bad. There is a limit to the amount people are willing to fork out to watch football. Cross that limit people will stop going to matches, cancel Sky subscriptions and so on and so forth. Once average Joe decides he doesn't want to pay £5000 for his season ticket or £200 a month for his Sky/BT subscription or £200 for a replica jersey, global fellowship will fall and the trend will be reversed. We are not far off that scenario.
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They will only have to inflate prices if the demand is not rising. As long as there is growth in some big markets, the current framework works.
 
There will be a transfer/wage cap before then in my opinion.
 
I remembered saying back in 2001 when Zidane joined Real Madrid for £50m that that transfer fee would never be broken.

How daft that comment looks now
 
MrPooni said:
No it's not.
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Agree to disagree. But let's be realistic, a newborn today has 30 years to become a billion pound player. Considering that players 30 years ago were going for a hundreds of thousands and now it's hundreds of millions, it's not that unrealistic.
 
Think Wenger is more likely to be right, than fees escalate way beyond the Neymar figure.
 
I don't think we would ever see a £1,000,000,000 transfer in our lifetime. It's just...not realistically possible even with the inflation madness of the current market. 10 years ago, I'd never thought we would see a £100,000,000 transfer and now the current record has more than doubled the last most expensive player. I think the Neymar transfer fee is a one-off and it would take a long long time before we see this record broken again. In the coming transfer windows, I'm sure we would see a number of great promising young players to those a tier just below Ronaldo, Messi averaging around £100m to £120m but £200m would take some beating.
 
Neymar's release clause was met. It's not a traditional transfer like Pogba or Bale or Ronaldo. CR7 has a release clause that's been said to be 1 billion Euro. Essentially, the buyout clause makes a player a free agent.

The thing that I'll never understand is why clubs are able to negotiate with the player and agents before going direct to the club. Why should personal terms with a different club be agreed to when said player already has personal terms and a valid contract with their current club? FIFA doesn't give a shit because it's attention they seek for the game and they'll profit off it. Overall, lack of transparency destroys the game. Certain things should be made publically available like wage breakdown, transfer costs and fees, buyout clauses, etc.
 
AlecHDR said:
They will only have to inflate prices if the demand is not rising. As long as there is growth in some big markets, the current framework works.
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I don't think there is going to be an inifinite expansion of demand. Once Asia and the Middle east max out, that's it. That's the whole world covered.
 
Fellaini to PSG. Give it 2 years. He will complete their team and they'll win the sextuple for the next decade.
 
LoneStar said:
Fellaini to PSG. Give it 2 years. He will complete their team and they'll win the sextuple for the next decade.
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Neymar will only truly fulfil his potential when there is big Maroune next to him knocking down long balls. :drool:
 
AlecHDR said:
Neymar will only truly fulfil his potential when there is big Maroune next to him knocking down long balls. :drool:
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Getting hard just thinking of all that sexy football that they'll be able to play together! :D
 
spiriticon said:
My opinion is that at some point, clubs will have to inflate ticket prices and TV companies will have to inflate subscription prices in order to maintain the financial growth in football.
Click to expand...

The top clubs are not spending any more today than they did 15 years ago if you compare it to their revenues. When Real Madrid bought Zidane the transfer sum they paid was about 54% of their total revenues from that season. Bayern, Real, Barca, and United all have revenues over €500 million now so if they where willing to spend as much as Madrid did on Zidane they could all beat the Neymar fee today.
 
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