Show me the Vini money – Football Familywebwatch

I gotta say, I do like that third kit, maybe even better than the away one. I guess it’s just because I’m a sucker for a red and white home shirt (sacred, so doesn’t change, apart from the cranberry year that we moved away from Highbury), and a yellow and blue away shirt, so this one always gets my vote. It’ll just be a shame that it’ll be used about twice next season, like the pink kit in 2022/23, which I also heartily enjoyed.

All of the preamble on kits is because, let’s face it, there’s still a lot of quiet around stuff that is happening from an incoming and outgoing perspective. Real Madrid are playing happy families on their socials with Vini Junior, with ESPN Brazil saying yesterday that he’s been offered a €22million-per-annum (£18.85million) contract, where he’s currently on €17.5million (£15million), and wants €30million (£25million) per-annum to ‘Sign da Ting’. In language we all understand (because that’s how we’ve been taught to think as football fans):

• Currently gets £336k-per-week
• Real have offered £355k-per-week
• He wants £577k-per-week

How do these footballers survive?

Quick caveat: wages are rarely truly accurate, and I’ve got a link below which demonstrates this, because the article talks about Vini’s current contract being € 25million per annum. And in the link below it also states that Forbes says his ‘on-field income’ – in other words, including bonuses, Brazilian National Team appearances, etc – amounts to closer to $40million (£29million) per annum.

Jebus – I don’t know about feeding his family, but there are small Islands he could feed with that type of cashola.

That is an obscene amount of money. I get it, ‘Brand Vini’ is big business, which is why Madrid don’t want to lose him; there’s what he can do on the pitch, but he also gives them cash for image rights, as well as global eyeballs. Kids/fans have been supporters of ‘players’ since the Messi/Ronaldo wars 10-15 years ago, so Vini Jr is just part of the wave that sees some kids supporting individuals as much as they support a specific club. It’s big business and big brands compete to get those big names to endorse their sh*t. But to a rapidly middle-ageing man like myself, even though I work in marketing, I still find time to be utterly bemused by those eye-watering numbers.

Arsenal clearly aren’t. They have run the numbers and clearly feel that ‘Brand Vini’ could be a nice little earner for them in terms of extra eyeballs and potentially knock-on effects in merch, awareness, etc. This article sets out Vini Jr’s full expected earnings – scroll straight to section nine to get an idea of the non-Real stuff. It’s difficult to really put a true figure on this stuff, but let’s take what is in that article as an idea on what he could be earning, and suddenly you see why this potential Arsenal deal is at least making him stop and think – at least before doing what I think he will do, which is ‘Sing da Ting’. If Madrid take 50% of his image rights, and he earns €20million off-field, then €10million goes to Madrid. If Arsenal have told him “you can have it all” then he’s bumping his salary up instantly by €10million-per-annum. So suddenly, with those back-of-a-fag-packet maths, if we assume Arsenal have told him they’ll match his wages at Real (we don’t know they have, but I’m speculating), in English pounds, according to the article and not ESPN Brazil (so I can keep consistency), the numbers (according to Forbes in the article) look like:

• $50million (£37.23million) at Madrid now – because Madrid take 50% of his image rights and endorsements
• $60million (£44.7million) if he was on the same deal at Arsenal now

So regardless of what Madrid put on the table, if he wants that sweet, sweet moolah, Arsenal become a preferred destination.

I still personally put this deal at around 25% chance it happens for us. The reason why? I think these levels of money are so crazy, that I’m really not sure that it matters too much for these footballers at that peak of wealth. I think footballers do use wages as a benchmark for how they are valued, so if that’s the case, then the image rights stuff will, I think, be swallowed by Vini Jr and his representatives. They’ll be annoyed with it, but ultimately the player gets a deal which means he can see another four years at his peak at Real Madrid, before probably heading off to Saudi aged 30 to get another mega payday – just like Neymar, Benzema, Ronaldo et al.

It says something about us as Arsenal fans though, eh? What I mean by that is that I’ve just spent circa 800-words putting together a case for us to land what would be the biggest transfer in Premier League history. Absolutely mental.

But, as I said, that’s because there’s bugger-all to talk about other than a shiny new yellow kit. And it’d be difficult to get to 1,000-words as I meticulously talk you through the ‘Arsenal State of Mind’ and ‘Blissful mentality’ that the Ad copy boys and girls and put together on the official site.

Still, at least there’s a friendly to overreact to tomorrow evening.

Back tomorrow as usual. Maybe something has happened by then. Where’s that meme of the drawing of a guy prodding a rock? Ah, here it is…