http://www.thestar.com/sports/article/573045
Cathal Kelly
STAFF REPORTER
While the giants of the sporting world are retrenching in the face of global recession, one Arab sheikh is reportedly in the process of obliterating the upper limits of athlete salaries.
Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, brother of the ruler of Abu Dhabi, is said to have offered a deal last week worth $300 million – $250 million for the rights, $50 million for salary – for a Brazilian soccer star. And that's just for year one.
Four months ago, the sheikh – whose enormous oil wealth is estimated at $27 billion – bought a middling English soccer club, Manchester City. Now he proposes to make it his personal fantasy team.
The current object of his fancy is a 26-year-old named Kaka. Sheikh Mansour has reportedly offered Kaka's current team, AC Milan, $200 million to procure his services. That's in addition to $33 million for Kaka's agents and another $17 million for his father, who acts as his son's adviser. Total purchase price – $250 million. Roughly speaking, the equivalent of the gross domestic product of Tonga. The current soccer transfer record is $92 million for Zinedine Zidane in 2001.
Today's London Observer claims the numbers — emanating mostly from a website owned by Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, the owner of AC Milan — have been dismissed as "wide of the mark" by an unnamed aide to the sheikh.
Kaka – nicknamed for the diminutive of his first name, Ricardo – was voted the world's best player in 2007. He is also an evangelical Christian who likes to flaunt his faith.
On several momentous occasions, Kaka has stripped off his jersey to reveal an undershirt with the message: "I belong to Jesus." He bragged that he was a virgin on the night of his wedding.
The sheikh is said to be proposing to guarantee Kaka an after-tax wage of $25 million a year on a four-year deal. That would put his annual gross income at roughly $50 million, far and away the most ever paid to a team athlete. Considering that Kaka tithes a tenth of his pay to the church, the only man happier than his retainers would be his minister.
Currently, the best-paid team athlete in the world is New York Yankee Alex Rodriguez. This year the 33-year-old third baseman will earn $40 million.
The sheer size of the reported offer has set the soccer world on its ear. In the past, deals this size have been talked about, mainly as fishing tales circling around a new generation of oil-rich owners, many of them from Russia. That talk dried up with the global credit crunch. But Sheikh Mansour is seemingly immune to shifts in the market. If he comes up short, he can always go to his family, whose total holdings may surpass $1 trillion.
If it makes Kaka the highest paid player in the world, Manchester City's spree would continue. One of Mansour's representatives has publicly mused about bidding another $250 million for Cristiano Ronaldo, voted the world's top player in 2008.
Arsene Wenger, manager of more humbly endowed English rival Arsenal, marvelled, "I don't feel any connection with (the Manchester City offer) at all because we live in a football club which lives in the real world."
Dave Whelan, chair of another league rival, was more succinct: "That is totally barmy."
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Originally Posted by BuffedGuy
