£80 Million For Lionel Messi? You Must Be Joking!

A few days ago I wrote an article saying how I hoped Man Utd would win the double, because I didn't want Chelsea to buy the Premier League or Champions League.

The very next day reports came out that Abramovich has sanctioned an £80 million pound bid for Lionel Messi.

Now I think Messi is the best player in the world right now, and with the right guidance can be as good, if not better, than Diego Maradona. But £80 million?

Just think for a second how much money that is. £80 million. If you had that money you'd be among the 1000 richest people in the world. And to spend that on one man is madness!

You may argue that Messi could help them win trophies, get more money, and help with the sales of club products, much like David Beckham did for Real Madrid.

But £80 million for one man. For one man?!

He's good, but no one is that good. This would be not far from twice the current transfer record held by Zinedine Zidane.

Now it's debatable whether Messi is better than Zidane was (I don't think he is yet) but is he twice as good and therefore worth twice as much? No way! 

Nowadays we tend to think that a £1 million pound transfer is a cheap sum. And, compared with some of the money in football nowadays, it's probably just pocket money to some of the owners.

But if you were to give me £1 million now, I would be the happiest man alive and you'd be a friend for life.

Ask me to do something for £1 million and I would do almost anything.

The money in football has become so out of proportion with everyday life. The wages some players are earning nowadays are insane. This is part of the reason I think players have lost touch with the fans.

However, the worst thing is that this isn't really a case of Chelsea unnecessarily spending. They could've got Wright-Phillips for less, probably Drogba, Carvalho, Essien, Shevchenko and Paulo Ferreira for less as well.

But they may not even get this gargantuan offer accepted. I believe Messi has a £125 million buyout clause in his contract.

That sort of money would put you into the top 620 richest in the world, on David and Victoria Beckham's level.

But as football gets richer, and becomes more of a business than game, I can only see these exorbitant fees getting higher and higher.

We'll have to wait and see whether it helps or hinders football.