How much do LOI players get paid?

[Colbert Report]

Is this information public? I think it is an excellent way to compare the quality of the league to other leagues. Can anyone tell me where I can find information like average wage, top earner for each team, top earner for the league and total payroll for each team per season? Thanks very much.

[ifk101]

Glen Crowe is the top earner, on about €5,000 a week plus bonuses.

[Spudulika]

Try Football Manager :-) it's about as realistic as figures submitted to the FAI and how Roddy gets his new signings (old Dublin City joke)

[osarusan]

I think it is an excellent way to compare the quality of the league to other leagues.

Seriously?

I doubt that info is in the public domain anyway.

[pineapple stu]

No reason it should be either.

There seems to be an addiction in society lately to having other people's salaries made public.

[Colbert Report]

Sorry, I'm here in North America where all salaries from any professional sports leagues are public by law. I'd like to know solely to compare the quality of leagues. It makes sense that the more a club is willing to pay players, the better players will play for that club. Not always true I realise, lots of times players will take less salary to play for their hometown club, etc.

I remember when Shamrock Rovers played the Danish champions in the Champions League last summer. They played well and only lost 1-0 away, which was an excellent result. They almost went up 1-0 in the return leg if I remember correctly, as they played extremely well and dominated the first twenty-five minutes or so, even hitting the woodwork at one point. In the second half though, Copenhagen kicked things into another gear and I realised just how much of a gulf in quality between the two sides there was.

What kind of investment would be needed to make a LOI competitive with teams like Copenhagen? When you say Glen Crowe is on five thousand euro a week, how much is that per year? Does he get paid only during the weeks of the season or can I just multiply by 52 and have a nice round figure for his gross earnings? Here in North America all annual salaries are in the public domain so it is much easier to see who is getting paid what.

I've often seen people on here contend that the LOI is roughly on par in terms of quality with the lower half of the Championship/upper half of League 1 in England. Is this a fair assumption? How do the earnings of players compare? Surely every starter in the Championship would be on at least five thousand euro a week?

[El-Pietro]

youve been whooshed there lad. Glen Crowe plays Leinster Senior League. No one in the LOI is on as much as €5,000 a year, not even close. Very few players on even a fifth of that anymore.

Majority of players are paid on a 40 week (Correct me if I'm wrong) season, but the numbers are made available, these guys don't get paid very much, a large number of them have full time jobs.

[peadar1987]

Most LOI players would be on part-time contracts, apart from a few at the likes of Sligo and Shams (can't remember offhand which other clubs are full-time, and a few will have some full-timers and some part-timers).

I couldn't find any accounts or anything, but according to this article: http://www.independent.ie/national-n...g-2859472.html the weekly wage bill at Shams last season was around €15,000 between a playing squad of 22, plus a coaching staff of say 5, that works out as an average of around €550 a week, and they would almost certainly have the biggest budget in the league these days.

Michael O'Neill said before the Spurs game that the annual budget for the entire club is €600,000, which would mean that the 65% wage cap is €390,000, or €7500 a week.

This article has the less-than-reliable Seán Caffrey saying Shams have a wage bill of €30k a week, with Sligo around €20k, Derry €18k and St. Pat's around €22k.

It's hard to work out what the actual figures are (I'd say they lie somewhere between Michael O'Neill and the Indo), but as a rough figure, most players would be comfortably under €1,000 a week, most probably closer to €400.

[razor]

Majority of players are paid on a 40 week (Correct me if I'm wrong) season, but the numbers are made available, these guys don't get paid very much

except Joe Gamble of course.

[Sam_Heggy]

Well Harps entire budget including management is €2,500 per week so make of that what you will.

[peadar1987]

except Joe Gamble of course.

He's on eighty bajillion a week. It's a disgrace.

[L.T.F.C.]

He's on eighty bajillion a week. It's a disgrace Joe!

I know of some players with Shams that are on more than 1k a week.

[peadar1987]

I know of some players with Shams that are on more than 1k a week.

Really? Which ones? That's got to be pushing down the average wage for some of the others pretty badly!

[Spudulika]

You have to be careful when speaking about weekly wages in an LOI or European (dodgy country) context. Bonuses are often not calculated. nor is accommodation, transport, expenses etc. Though I do think the FAI licensing needs to have them shown in full. An example from here.

Samuel Eto'o is on a reported 20million euros a year - (no matter what he has to pay 13% tax) - and the club are paying 80,000euros a month for his apartment in Moscow. Now, the apartment (which is on 4 storeys) was listed at 30,000euros a month in January 2011, so why has the price jumped? Much of what is written about wages is complete tosh. Same with transfer fees. The best way to lower your tax payments on profits, or a windfall, is to "invest" in a football club's playing staff. Then again, in Ireland...

[marinobohs]

Wages negotiated individually betwen player and club and there can be a huge difference within the same club. Even within clubs individual contract details are known to a few (usually involved in the negotiations) all the rest are speculation/guesstimates/urban myth. If I recall right US employed a central contract system which explains the increased transperency as against the irish (European) model. As Spud outlined accomadation, cars etc sometimes make up part of the package further muddying the issue

Absolutely no link whatsoever between wages paid and standard of League (except that hiogher wage should attract higher standard player - or David Beckham). Wages paid most closely linked to available money in geographical juristiction and number of individuals with large egos

[Dodge]

Its definitely a North American thing. You can see them all here;
http://www.mlsplayers.org/salary_info.html

latest here;
http://www.mlsplayers.org/files/Augu...0By%20Club.pdf

Ex LOI player Ryan Guy is on $44,000 dollars per year. He was on more with Pats before he left. There's nobody with Pats on anything near that now.

Wonder how that fits in with Colbert's twisted logic

[peadar1987]

Absolutely no link whatsoever between wages paid and standard of League (except that hiogher wage should attract higher standard player - or David Beckham). Wages paid most closely linked to available money in geographical juristiction and number of individuals with large egos

I think there's a threshold where the wages start to affect the standard of the league. I'd move to Sweden or Austria if I was going to be paid enough to cover my moving costs, and to make up for the hassle of trying to adust me and my family, if I had one, to the new language and culture. Most players wouldn't leave a £300 a week contract in Ireland because a club in Romania is offering £400, and a 33% wage boost is not to be sniffed at. The percentage is good, but the actual amount in real terms doesn't justify moving.

[nigel-harps1954]

I'd be very surprised if there was many players/if any in the league outside of maybe Sligo and Shamrock Rovers, earning more than 500 a week.

[Colbert Report]

What do players earn in League 1/League 2 over in England? I get the point that nobody from Ireland is going to move to Romania for an extra fifty euro a week, but a move to England for the same money I think most players would consider. No major language or cultural differences. Can someone give me a better way to compare leagues? UEFA have given the LOI a coefficient number of 7.375, but England and Spain are both on 84. Are their leagues really twelve times better than ours? A one off performance in Europe is hardly a great way to rate the leagues, in my opinion. I'm well aware of how the coefficient rankings are calculated, and it obviously favours bigger footballing nations like England who have multiple teams go straight into the group stages of the CL.

This all came from a guy who posted in the International forum and questioned why someone else figured reserve players for Championship teams would be on average better players than u-19 players for LOI teams. Surely the reserve players in the Championship in England would be on five or even ten times the money?

[Longfordian]

Reserve players is a poor comparison. There's a lot of lads who sign with an English club at 16 and progress to the Reserves. They then often get released and come back home. They'll have been on much more money in England but don't turn out to be any better than players in the LOI.