Is La Liga The Place To Be?
La Liga (Basically)
An article in today’s Daily Mail claims that La Liga is the place to be for top footballers and cites the examples of Ronaldo, Kaka, Villa and Fabregas as examples of top players all wanting to play (or stay) in Spain.
Looking at the Barcelona and Real Madrid teams, it is certainly hard to argue that a lot of the best players in the world do indeed play there. But is La Liga itself actually a better League?
Arsene Wenger certainly doesn’t think so and he said recently words to the effect that La Liga is basically two teams and then the rest finish miles behind.
A look at last season’s standings certainly bears this out. Champions Barca (99 points), Runners-up Real Madrid (96 points), third placed Valencia (71 points). That’s twenty-five points between second and third.
It’s like the SPL with Sun.
However, there is a much more important reason why some of the top players are all heading for Spain at the moment and it is something that makes it very difficult for English clubs to compete for these players and that is the Income Tax difference between the two countries.
The top tax rate in Spain at the moment is 30% but the top tax rate in the UK is 50%.
What this means is that a top player in England would have to be paid nearer £140,000 a week to earn about the same as a player paid £100,000 per week in Spain.
It doesn’t tell the whole story, of course, but I’d be prepared to bet a pound to a penny that it is a major consideration.
I’m sure the tax in Spain will rise in the coming months due to Spain’s deficit problem…and the pound is getting stronger…so the situation will be reversed in the Winter mercato…maybe we could see Silva coming to England???
I dunno about “reversed” exactly but if it gets to the stage where we are competing for signings on a roughly level playing field it would be nice.
Maybe the tax in Spain can go over 50%…that would be nice…and tax the highly paid footballers…say 90%??
Without getting into a long philosophical debate about why progressive tax systems are not only counter-productive, immoral and basically wrong. I’ll agree to disagree with you on that one, Red.
The article was just to outline something that seems to be overlooked a lot of the time when it appears that English clubs have “lost out” to Spanish clubs in the signing of players.
Maybe one day the situation will reverse itself but I don’t think the recent exodus of top talent in the direction of Spain is a coincidence.