Just read this article and found it unbelievable - how can a player like Barnes, certainly the most skilful English player I have seen over the last 20 or so years, end up with so little financially out of the game? He won several titles with Liverpool, played in two WC's and plenty more and he ends up living a very modest lifestyle indeed.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/fameandfortune/4928143/John-Barnes-All-the-clothes-I-buy-now-are-from-shops-like-Primark.html
I think the truth is that players in those days (and Barnes' best days were over by 1996) were on nowhere near the money they are on now.
David May wrote an article in WSC last week when he said that back in 1994 when Blackburn had Alan Shearer that Shearer was on (only!) 9,000 per week - and he was the best paid player in the country at the time!!! Christ Alive! 9K per week these days doesn't even get you a dodgy Ukrainian left-back!!!
At the same time in 1994 May said he was only on 500 quid per week basic wage and Blackburn would not give him the 4K per week he wanted so he went to Old Trafford.
It's unbelievable to me that a player like Barnes can end up with so little to show - in financial terms at least - for such a glorious career when even average players today like Craig Bellamy will end up multi-millionaires.
Comments
Think the divorce and all those kids probably cost him quite a bit
Even if Barnes was getting 10K per week - and I doubt it - that would only be 500K per year which after tax would be only 300K per year which once you get to a certain lifestyle does not go that far - especially when you earning power drops suddenly as suddenly as it does for a top player.
If you think about it post Italia 90 all the best English players were still going to Italy (Platt, Walker) to earn decent money and even Gazza joining Lazio in 1993 was getting 24K per week which was way, way more than he could have got from anyone else in England.
Amdy Faye
Marcus Bent
to name but two uselss and worthless footballers it's a sad indictment of today's game.
And that, Sir, is precisely my point!!!
A LOT MORE THAN THE TWO BOB they are worth, those two KNUTS are in my
opinion worse than all the Milne's and Agboola's . Just plain conmen.
Divorce, family, etc takes it's toll, of course - but then that applies to many of us.
True, but the point is that on the wages that a player of Barnes' ability these days - let's say Gerrard for example - could not spend his career earnings if he married and divorced every slapper in Liverpool and fathered enough kids to fill the Kop!!!
Seriously, they are now talking about United paying Ronaldo 200K per week as the world slumps into a depression, what a sick joke.
I'd rather pay him 200k than Marcus 20k.
The fact that Barnes has managed to take a fortune from playing and TV and management and spunk it up the wall is nothing to do with what players get now. He still got 10 times what a normal person would. Don't feel sorry for people that had it and threw it away, feel sorry for those that never had it.
Exactly my point, even if he was on comparitvely low wages compared to today's big earners, he would still have been earning surely in the region of 2-3-4k per week, if Shearer was the bench mark on 9k per week, still fantastic wages, I'd quite happily take it.
Players on ludicrous wages funded by TV revenue that probably is'nt there when they finally have to cough up.
Great place, I went there once. Near Sweden.
Whether player money was less in those days was irrelevent. JB spent the bulk of his career earning in a fortnight what most people earn in a year. Follow that up with managerial roles and pay offs, endorsements, advertising, video games, tv hosting and appearances, after dinner speaking, the guy has earned somewhere between £5-10m, on a very conservative estimate.
Don't get me wrong, I don't feel sorry for him! He's had a life that most of us could only dream of. My point was that he was in the best three players in the country for a decade and played for the biggest club in the land for years and has ended up relatively modestly off.
If he had played ten years later there is no way in the world he could have spent his career earnings because his 10,000 per week (if he was ever earning that much) would have been 100,000 per week and that is a big, big difference.
It also shows that clubs in that era still believed to a large degree in wage restraint compared to what goes on in the market today.
That's the whole point, he doesn't really have much earning potential these days. How much do you reckon he gets paid for the Jamaican gig? The Jamaican FA are skint so he's probably not getting much more than an English non-league coach.
I DO NOT feel sorry for Barnes because he has obviously wasted a ton of money but it is interesting to see that the golden player of the pre-Premiership era now lives modestly whereas the likes of Gerrard, Fowler and Owen (to name but three) could almost quite literally never spend all the money they have earned.
The money available in the modern game to the top Premiership players is simply staggering and of course mostly comes directly from the Sky punters, it will be fascinating to see how much Sky's subs base drops if the economic outlook worsens.
Details of the bankruptcy petition began to emerge at the beginning of the week when a form from the Insolvency Service was circulating online. News then broke on Thursday in the national press.
An Insolvency Service spokeswoman told the Liverpool Echo that they would "dispose of his assets and pay back his creditors". It has not been disclosed how much Barnes owes the tax man.
Barnes' home in Heswall is currently on the market for £650,000.
Barnes insisted: ''The bankruptcy issue is a tax oversight which is being dealt with.''
In March, the Barnes told The Daily Telegraph: ''I don't like dealing with taxes of course. 'I just hate not having enough money. Apart from that, I don't like dealing with bills and never have done. I let my wife Andrea deal with them.
''I don't even like opening them. A few times my credit card has been declined when I've been travelling abroad. Then I have to get creative about paying the bill and have to really root around. That's much more satisfying than just having it come easily.''
Barnes was manager of League One side Tranmere Rovers for a short spell until he was sacked earlier this month. Before that he was in charge of the Jamaican national team.
''You got to pass and move but do it at the right time....''
Bollocks.
Make the glass bigger? WTFingF?
John Barnes lives on the Wirral. Part of Merseyside but not Liverpool. It's very nice infact.