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I will pay him 20 million francs a year. But it's a gift, it's strictly zero, it's nothing!" Bernard Tapie did not think so well to say, on the set of Telefoot in 1989, talking about Diego Maradona. More than three decades later, wages in football have skyrocketed. But it didn't happen overnight. At the dawn of the 1990s, a first economic boom affected football. Olympique de Marseille and especially AC Milan, opponents in the 1993 Champions League final, did not escape.
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If he produced some nuggets, the Italian club was not the last to afford stars. Especially after Silvio Berlusconi became president in 1986. A year later, Milan spent €6.8 million on the transfer of Dutch midfielder Ruud Gullit, a world record at the time. He went further in 1992 for Jean-Pierre Papin, torn from ... OM for barely €11 million, then in the wake for the promising Gianluigi Lentini, about €15 million. Ridiculous sums compared to those that dot football today: since 2018, nine players have been transferred for more than €100 million.
The best player in the world at less than €20 million in 1989?
At the time, AC Milan was expensive, very expensive. In addition to Papin, Ballon d'Or 1991, he had with him another striker winner of the prestigious trophy: Marco Van Basten (1988, 1989, 1992). The Dutchman was bought a year before his first Ballon d'Or at Ajax Amsterdam, for the modest sum of € 2 million. "The value of a player is calculated on the value of the contract," says Pierre Rondeau, sports economist. Low salary and/or short contracts often mean low value.
Jean-Pierre Papin was (briefly) the most expensive player in the world, bought from OM by AC Milan for around €11 million in 1991. Buzzi / PanoramiC
How can we estimate the price of the squads of the great Milan and OM, European champion 1993? Let's start with the figures mentioned by Tapie for Maradona. "He was ready to pay him 20 million francs per year, or €5.24 million," says Pierre Rondeau. If we accept a 3-year contract, which is the average, it would make the best player in the world estimated at € 15.7 million, plus a coefficient of increase.
»It is reasonable to imagine that, for Maradona, a club could have broken its piggy bank and exceeded €20 million for a transfer. This is about 10 times less than the historical record of the transfer of Neymar, passed from FC Barcelona to PSG in 2017 for € 222 million, followed by Kylian Mbappé for € 180 million from Monaco to Paris. If we apply the same percentage (10%) to the squads, then comes a beginning of answer concerning Milan and OM.
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AC Milan in 1993 = Strasbourg in 2023
The specialized site Transfermarkt evaluates the squads of Chelsea and Manchester City at more than one billion euros. Five other clubs, including PSG, exceed €800 million. We can therefore estimate the value of the Rossoneri at less than €100 million. For OM, who were not like the Milanese ogre, not even sure that we reached €50 million. Because if Tapie was ready for madness for Maradona, he did not go higher than € 5.4 million for Chris Waddle (1989) and € 7.5 million for Dragan Stojkovic (1991).
The calculations remain, of course, approximate. He still is in football, especially without having access to every salary and contract duration of players from 30 years ago. Nevertheless, they give an idea of the abysmal financial gap between the two eras. €100 million in 2023 is what Strasbourg's workforce is worth according to Transfermarkt. Not enough, today, to play a Champions League final.
OM 1993: Barthez, Boli, Völler... What happened to the heroes?
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