Mid-Week Fixture: Cold-Hard Ka(ka)sh

For all its unquantifiable factors such as useful statistics to compare players, one thing is clear when it comes to success in the soccer — the more you spend, generally the better you do.

The Gazzetta della Sport, the daily bible for sport in the country, recently published a list of all player salaries in Serie A. AC Milan's Kaka is the highest-paid player, pulling in 6 million Euros (roughly US$8.34 million) a season, and Milan is the biggest spender out of all clubs, totalling 120 million Euros (US$168.8 million) in player salaries.

It shouldn't be much of a surprise that Milan, Inter Milan and Juventus are far and away the biggest spenders, at 120m, 110m and 97m total, respectively, but three things struck me from this report:

1. Italian soccer players don't make nearly as much money as I thought they did.
2. The gulf between the 3rd- and 4th-highest spenders is massive - Juventus spends nearly 40 million more than Roma.
3. Lazio wins the 2006-07 award for Biggest Bang for Their Euro, although the asterisk for that is about as big as the gulf between the spending of Juventus and Roma.

Historically, Italian soccer has been the land of the rich. The prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, used his TV ownership money to fund the great Milan teams of the last 20 years, while Fiat has been the financial muscle behind Juventus for decades. It clearly isn't widespread - most Italian clubs are barely fiscally solvent, even those in Serie A - but clubs like Inter Milan, Roma and Lazio have somehow found a way to keep up with the Big Two without being run into the ground by (too much) corrupt bookkeeping.

Despite being the destination for global footballers during the 1990s, Italian soccer started to decline, in money spent in the transfer market and the overall success of its clubs in Europe. This trend coincided with the rise of the English Premier League, whose NFL-like business model created a shift in worldwide popularity and television revenue. In 2007, the Premier League was the biggest spender in the transfer market and on player salaries, followed by Spain, Italy, Germany and France. All leagues have a giant gulf between the haves and have-nots, but in England, the television revenue is at least distributed evenly, giving everybody at least a reasonable shot; Clint Dempsey's winning goal for Fulham last year against Liverpool not only kept Fulham in the Premier League, it earned them tens of millions of pounds they wouldn't have gotten this year in the Coca-Cola Championship (England's second-tier). Clubs in Spain and Italy negotiate their own TV deals, meaning some clubs (Barcelona, Real Madrid) earn more than others.

Which is more important to club owners, pride and prestige or dollars and cents? Based on the influx of foreign owners in the Premier League, most of whom have or had little rooting interest in the teams themselves, it's clearly the latter. When owning an EPL team can create as much revenue as your typical American sports franchise, that trend surely won't go out of vogue anytime soon.

Back to Italy, I was surprised at how little, relatively, money the players made. Kaka probably makes less money than LA Dodger Luis Gonzalez, but he surely is the better player and more marketable throughout the world; the money Milan must make off him is staggering. Being a star in Europe, South America and Asia must have its financial rewards - I'm sure Kaka makes plenty of money from his Adidas contract - but he's still making a smaller salary than if he played for Real Madrid or Chelsea. No wonder both teams figured they could have signed him this summer.

Finally, the Lazio conundrum. They look to have made out like gangbusters in 2007, spending just 18 million Euros for a team that reached the lucrative Champions League group stages and being the flagship for more overt fascist propoganda. They certainly did; however, you must remember that the 2006 match-fixing scandal in Italy sent perennial powerhouse Juventus down to Serie B for a season and docked Milan eight points in Serie A. Lazio, meanwhile, were also punished in the scandal, but their original punishment of relegation was changed to an 11-point docking in Serie A to just a three-point one. They had a great season, finishing third, but you can't expect the team to match that result this time around, or for as long as they keep the purse strings tightened.

I (nearly) told you so

Last week, I had an (unfinished) post about how France's likelihood of securing a good result in Italy had heightened exponentially, simply because its coach, Raymond Domenach, was suspended for it.

My reasoning for the prediction was based on him making numerous dubious decisions during the World Cup and his inability to put together a strong team, despite a ridiculous amount of talent. And, as an avid astrologist, he distrusted Scorpios so much that he didn't include any of them in his team. It made sense that I didn't trust him, either.

This prediction proved fairly prophetic: France tied Italy in Milan 0-0 in what Diesel described as a "horrible" game (I was too busy going to another "horrible game, Michigan-Oregon, to watch). Five days later, Domenach returned to the sidelines and France promptly lost. At home. To Scotland.

As a Scorpio, I was well vindicated.