Millionaire kids feel the Neymar effect
THE massive increase in transfer fees for elite players since Neymar’s £200million move has also seen a remarkable rise in contracts for promising youngsters yet to break into the first team.
Agents report that Premier League clubs are prepared to pay £1m a year or more to keep their best 18 to 20-year-olds, knowing they could soon fetch £30m if they continue developing. Paying your three best academy players £1m a year for three years is a £9m investment with the probability that at least one will be worth £15m or more.
The most high-profile player to benefit is Manchester City defender Tosin Adarabioyo, who was able to negotiate a £25,000-a-week deal despite having made only a handful of appearances in cup competitions and none in the Premier League. Adarabioyo, 20, who is wealthy enough to have bought a £2.25m six-bedroom home in Cheshire, was being chased by Everton and Celtic.
REUNIONS for famous trophy-winning teams, like the 50th anniversary dinner being planned for West Brom’s 1968 FA Cup victors, are commonplace. But it is highly unusual for complete failures like England’s doomed 2018 World Cup bid, which attracted only one vote outside the UK, to have regular get-togethers. Their most recent gathering — reminiscing about how all the big FIFA rogues lied to them about their voting intentions — was a few days ago. The 2018 bid chief executive Andy Anson — just appointed CEO of five-a-side football company Goals Soccer Centres, who have big expansion plans in the US — picked up the tab.
THE irony of Kieron Dyer revealing in his autobiography the gambling addiction of England’s golden generation is that despite joining in with the big card games, Dyer managed to keep hold of his millions much better than most footballers.
Dyer’s book detailing the betting culture during Sven Goran Eriksson’s reign has set up a rich line of questioning when the Swede (above) makes a rare appearance as a Sky pundit for his former club Leicester City’s game against Stoke on Saturday week.
IT seems unfair on those paying up to £161 per ticket to get into Twickenham that while TV viewers had a number of replays of one pretty innocuous mass dust-up during the England-Wales game, the big screens in the stadium displayed crowd pictures instead. Six Nations policy dictates that nothing should be screened that would influence a referee’s decision.