Soccer or Hunger - Essay Example

Soccer has become a profitable industry due to the amount of attention that is devoted to it in developed countries. It turned out that being a soccer player is a decent occupation; at least the salaries of the soccer players in some parts of the world, are higher than those of the doctors or lawyers. The numbers found in the Soccer and World Football FAQ were that in top Euro leagues the soccer players make from $50,000 to $7,000,000-8,000,000. The statistics stroke us down by the fact that the financial state of the European soccer players is not as good as it seemed, as the average salary is no more than $1,500,000.

The top salary in Mexico is $2,200,000, but the average one is no more than $400,000. High profile players like David Beckham earn roughly 10 million a year from their salary alone. Roy Keane (Manchester United) got paid 100,000 a week, while Ronaldinio gets paid 7.6 million per year. One more popular soccer player, Del Piero, earns 1000 pounds every hour of his life, which is 8064000 a year. (Soccer and World Football FAQ). The author of the article published in a Soccer Digest in 2002 emphasizes that most European teams spend nearly 80% of their annual take on player salaries.

The sums that are paid for transfers of the soccer players are also enormous. Milan paid $48million in transfer fees to lure Ronaldo from Barcelona (One on One with Ronaldo, 1998). Real Madrid parted with $67 million to buy Zinedine Zidane from Juventus. Comparing to this one, the previous Real's purchase was quite a bargain - only $53,3 million for the delight of playing with famous Louis Figo.It's a well-known fact, that lots of the world's most famous and prosperous players were born in Brazil, a country where soccer is a national sport, a well-paid occupation, and a profitable industry.

The Brazilian club officials earn millions every year, while 50 million people live below the poverty line in this country. (The Man With the Plan, 2002). It has been estimated that about 30 million Brazilian children live in conditions that are subhuman and inadequate for their development. (Rupesinghe, Kumar, Rubio, 1994). Children there don't have time to play, to have fun, or to study, as they have to find food for not to starve, and clothes for not getting sick.Nevertheless, as the research shows the situation in Brazil is not the worst possible.

To be honest, Brazilian slums seem to be quite a decent place comparing to the Nigerian villages. "The U.N. humanitarian agency estimates some 800,000 children under 5 are suffering from hunger, including 150,000 faced with severe malnutrition." (Children in Niger starve as foreign aid trickles in, 2005).Watching soccer is a good pastime, and it is worthy of paying for. Being a player is not an easy job, and it should be well-paid. But it's immoral to spend enormous sums of money on entertainment when people are starving to death, as they don't have $1 a day for food.