Football doesn’t make everyone rich. What players’ salaries tell us about the world of football

Life as a professional footballer in Italy does not always correspond to millionaire salaries. Indeed, in most cases this is not the case, and those who pass from the world of professionalism – which extends from Serie A to Serie C – have a future to study once they hang up their boots. Over 50 percent of those who battle for 90 minutes on the fields of Italy between Saturday and Sunday earn less than 50,000 euros gross a year. The figure emerges from the Observatory relating to the Professional Sports Pension Fund (FPSP), which shows that 9,079 professional sportsmen with at least one contribution paid during 2022, 92.3 per cent belonging to the Italian Football Federation (the Figc). In 2022 there was a 6.9 per cent increase in the number of workers compared to the previous year. As far as football players are concerned, last year 4,343 members of the Football Federation paid at least one contribution (the payment also concerns foreign players). According to the data released by INPS, 56 percent of registered players get a gross contribution of up to 50,000 euros, figures that are unattainable even in other working environments. The category in which most players fall is in fact the one with a salary between 10,000 and 50,000 euros (1,742 players, equal to 40 per cent of the total), while 691 (1 per cent) earn up to 10 thousand euros. Going up in category, those who earn between 50 and 100 thousand euros (457 athletes) represent just over 10 percent of players registered with the Federation, while 22 per cent refers to the 970 athletes who earn between 100 and 700 thousand euros each season (884 athletes equal to 23 percent of the total). Finally, the wealthiest bracket: there were 483 players who in 2022 had a salary of over 700 thousand euros, i.e. equal to 11 percent.