If you want to get Bayern Munich legend and supervisory board member Karl-Heinz Rummenigge going, just ask him how he feels about the state of salaries in football.
“The big problem in top-level European football isn’t transfer fees. Perhaps not everyone has yet recognized the real problem. It’s the high salaries. If you pay 100 million for Harry Kane, that’s a lot of money. But the club amortizes that over five years, so it’s 20 million per year on the balance sheet. The big problem is the high salaries. FC
Bayern are feeling that too. When it comes to our players’ salaries, we have been somewhat generous – and we have to say that self-critically,” Rummenigge told Welt am Sonntag (via @iMiaSanMia). “Players base their value on their salary. The appreciation often mentioned by players is actually the financial significance that many associate with it. We have to be incredibly careful not to get into a spiral with the salary structure that then becomes difficult to control. Paris St. Germain have solved that in an exemplary way over the past 24 months. They brought in a coach who, from the very beginning, said something like: ‘I don’t need superstars who just make my dressing room dizzy.‘ Our payroll is at a level that also means there’s a lot of talk about money. As we can see at PSG, you can also achieve big success by changing the system.”
“Experience shows that you can always find a solution when it comes to transfer fees. Let’s take Mathys Tel as an example. He was in the average salary bracket with us, and accordingly, I think it was possible to achieve a very good transfer fee. It’s more difficult with other players on higher salaries. Starting this summer, the most stringent stage of UEFA’s new Financial Sustainability Program will come into effect: clubs will then only be allowed to spend 70 percent of their income on squad costs, including transfers, salaries, and agent fees. So, everyone is trying to reduce their payroll for now.”
Rummenigge also said that Bayern Munich has a plan in place to help balance things on the roster moving forward.
“Our sporting leadership presented the supervisory board with a very coherent concept in which 14 to 16 players would earn a ‘very decent’ salary, four to six players at a lower level – and the rest of the squad would then consist of campus players,” said Rummenigge. “We had the best experiences with Louis van Gaal. He put his trust in Thomas Müller, Holger Badstuber, and David Alaba at a very young age. And he often told us as club management when it came to potential transfers: ‘You don’t need to buy! We have them at home.‘ That requires a courage that I have always admired in him. He created value for the club. Hansi Flick recently achieved something similar at FC Barcelona. The club was having major financial problems. And Hansi made a virtue out of necessity. FC Bayern must be able to produce more players like (Aleksandar) Pavlović or (Josip) Stanišić in the future. Ideally, we should produce one player every year who makes it into the first team. We have to support the coach in that.”
Rummenigge has the right idea in theory, but the practice of shuttling out the heavy earners to help balance things has been difficult. Max Eberl has done a decent job this summer of ridding the club of some big salary numbers from the budget, but a more practical approach moving forward will be needed — especially as salaries continue to rise.
