Footballers and investment? They succumb to the impression that they are stars and should live high on the hog, thinks Šmicer

“A boy like that after his apprenticeship is used to living on six, seven hundred. He comes to us and takes six, seven thousand. What’s he going to do with that? He doesn’t know. A boy like that must be going crazy.” Perhaps nothing sums up Premier League transfers more than the legendary quote from the Czech comedy Jáchym, throw him in the machine. Vladimír Šmicer talked about working with wages in England.

The English Premier League is the most prestigious league competition in Europe in many ways. Firstly, the overall quality of the competition and its status. Many players prefer to choose a team from the second half of the PL table at the expense of a team from Spain or Germany playing in the Champions League.

The second reason is that the English competition is the best paid in Europe. Even the weakest teams have decent sums on their paychecks, which combined with the quality of their opponents is a temptation that few will refuse.

“Players in Britain have little awareness that there will come a time when they will quit, and they spend on cars, big houses, watches and they are not sensible,” Vladimir Smicer told the Livesport podcast.

The high salaries in the British Isles are of course linked to the financially challenging life in Britain, especially in London. Still, their salaries are so high that they can invest a lot of money while living a normal life without spending too much.

Nowadays, footballers in most of Europe are already trained to manage their unusually high earnings wisely. They learn about investing in lectures and are taught how not to be fooled by scammers.

Yet there are cases of players who have one season in big-time football, then fizzle out, get used to the high life and a few years later are drowning in debt. Fortunately, in recent seasons, there have been fewer such players.

“Maybe they are under the impression that they are stars and that they should be living the high life. But they don’t have to. Fans like them for what they do on the pitch, not for what they drive or where they live,” continued the former Liverpool and Lens player.

In any case, even Premier League players now face a challenge. They have to resist lucrative offers from Saudi Arabia. Not all of them are successful, for example Aleksandar Mitrovic of Fulham is so eager to leave that he said he never wants to play for Fulham again.

“I’ve always been terribly wary of anyone coming to me with an offer of investment. So 95 per cent of the time I didn’t go for it. I neverput more than a third of my assets into anything and I chose more conservative investments, I trusted real estate more than stocks,” Šmicer said.

Source: Livesport Daily