Western Daily Press (Saturday)
Ronaldo’s £400k weekly wage – the lifetime earnings of our 1966 lions
ENGLAND’S fallen 1966 World Cup heroes left behind an average estate of under £400,000 – the same amount Ronaldo earns in a week.
Probate documents show the estates of Gordon Banks, Alan Ball, Bobby Moore and Ray Wilson left to family members were an average of £394,000.
This included money banked from the sales of their World Cup winning medals which, with the exception of Moore, had been auctioned before their deaths to try and secure their loved ones’ futures.
Reports suggest Ronaldo signed a contract at Manchester United at the start of this season that would bring in that amount in just seven days.
The disparity between the lifetime earnings of England’s proudest football lions and the day rate of the superstars of today has been brought into sharp focus by the bringing together of the wills for the first time.
Three other members of the team who have passed away – Jack Charlton, Martin Peters, Nobby Stiles – have not gone through probate so no public listing of their finances is available.
And with the death of striker Roger Hunt last month, which was too recent for any details of his estate finances to be made public, there are now just only three survivors from the 11 – Geoff Hurst, George Cohen and Bobby Charlton – who are still alive.
Captain Moore, who lifted the Jules Rimet trophy on that historic day, was the first member of the team to die in February 1993 after battling bowel cancer.
Probate was granted the following May which valued his estate at £134,528. His football memorabilia including his medals were later sold by his first wife Tina to West Ham in 2000.
Goalkeeper Gordon Banks was the most successful financially among those whose records are now public. He left behind an estate totalling £767,059 to his wife Ursula after his death in February 2019.
Winger Alan Ball, the youngest player in the final, had a total estate of £799,851 after his death from a heart attack in 2007. But after probate the net value inherited by his wife Janet was just £358,164.
Left-back Ray Wilson died in May 2018 and left behind an estate of £322,384 to his wife Patricia, according to his probate documents.
The value of all the estates had been boosted by the sale of medals and memorabilia from the time.
Hunt was just one of three team members – the Charlton brothers being the other two – who hadn’t sold their World Cup winning medals. However, he did sell a large amount of memorabilia from his career in 2016 to try to raise money.
In 2001 Banks sold his World Cup medal at auction for £124,750 while Stiles auctioned his, alongside his European Cup one, for a combined £200,000 in 2010 so his family could benefit from the proceeds.
Speaking about the sale at the time, Stiles said: “It was always my intention to leave the entire collection to my children. But I have three sons – how do you fairly divide up this sort of collection between them?
“They have each selected some pieces they would like to keep for themselves.”
He added: “I’m as patriotic as the next Englishman and will always cherish my memories and the friendships I made in my playing days, but at this stage of my life I would rather have some control over the distribution of my memorabilia and know that my family will benefit.”