Money, Really Good Soccer Players & Neymar

Barcelona just sold Neymar to PSG for $262 million, roughly $50 million less than Steemit's market capital as I write this. If this is the final amount, the trade would be more than double the previous record of $118 million that Manchester United paid for Juventus' star Frenchman, Paul Pogba last summer. To compare to a sport my American friends are more familiar with it also belittles the sums being paid in the NFL. The Indianapolis Colts' Andrew Lick contract extension cost them a cool $140 million.

Let's not forget that $262 million doesn't even include the salary or bonus of the 25-year-old Brazilian would receive.

But, if you're like me and you've known soccer for a while, you might remember back in 2009 Kaka moved from Milan to Real Madrid for $76.5 million. Or you might even remember Zinedine Zidane's move from Juventus to Real Madrid way back in 2001 for $88 million. But those were the prices for the World's best players back then, surely they must be close to the whopping $262 million Neymar was bought for? Actually no. Zidane's adjusted cost is only $108 million and Kaka's just $83 million.

If you're even more like me you might actually think that Zidane was a better player than Neymar. So why does Neymar cost so much?

Really it is just simple supply and demand. Soccer clubs recieve a large amount of money from:

• TV rights
• Sponsors/partners/competition rewards/publicity
• Merchandise
• Tickets

People, like myself, want to watch really good soccer and really good soccer is usually played by really good players. Thus, the better the soccer we're watching, the more money it moves. That's just simple supply and demand.

As to how efficient Neymar would need to be in terms of goals, assists, passes et cetera is a more in-depth question. Neymar has had a scoring rate of 0.607 goals per game at Barcelona (68 goals in 112 appearances) . He cost Barcelona $67 million dollars. So that is roughly $599,196.429 per game or $986,911.765 per goal. Now he obviously does more than just score, he passes the ball, assists, creates space, opportunities, fakes injuries and many other things. Should Neymar have a similar performance at PSG with the same tenure, he'll be costing them $2,339,285.71 per game or $3,852,941.17647 per goal. That's a lot.

Whether he'll churn some profit at PSG is yet to be seen.

But really, what else could you do with $262 million?

• Enjoy a private party for 365 days with the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
  According to Celebrity Talent International the average hire fee for the band is between $500,000 and $1,000,000. If you negotiate a fee of $717,808 you could relish a personal concert from Jan. 1 through to Dec. 31st.

• Buy an IKEA coffee table for every person in Namibia
  If you wanted to buy all 2,201,680 citizens of Namibia a $119 coffee table, just one Neymar is about what it would cost you.

• **Invest 204,687,500 STEEM into your Steemit account **
  One Neymar would give you 85.78% of Steemit's current market capital.

What would you do with $262 million?