A taxing time in prospect for Arshavin
WHEN, last month, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced a new 50p top rate of tax for those earning more than £150,000-a-year – it comes in next April - we worried for Premier League footballers and how the increase would impact on their lifestyles.
Arsenal’s Andrey Arshavin, according to the Daily Mail, is worried too, even before the 50p rate comes in, revealing that “certain nuances” have emerged regarding British taxation that he’s not happy about, ie he has to pay it.
Arshavin has asked the club to renegotiate his £80,000-a-week contract, which he signed in January, because he has been “unpleasantly surprised” by how much of it is hoovered up in tax. “I’m getting less money than I expected,” he explained, “it’s not critical, but I still need to put it right. My agent is now taking care of it.
“My advice to other Russian players who may move to England in the summer is . . . it is important to understand clearly and in detail what money you are going to get and what taxes to pay, so that there are no unpleasant surprises of the kind I am facing now.”
Cristiano Ronaldo, meanwhile, faces a tax increase of £670,000 next year, on his £125,000-a-week wages, with the paper noting – a touch mischievously, if you ask us – that the top tax rate in Spain is only 25 per cent.
Mind you, Switzerland would be an even better option.
Quotes of the week
"The Wednesday night atmosphere when you, maybe, go to Madrid and Barcelona . . . you can smell the cigars and there's perfume wafting down from the stands. It's wonderful, it's different. I love it." – Alex Ferguson goes all William Wordsworth-ish.
"You go to Milan and everyone's so stylish. Every woman who passes you by is Miss World." – Ferguson again, this time on playing away in Europe. No, no – not that way.
"I am 99 per cent certain to stay on the Juventus bench next season." – Claudio Ranieri, the day before he was fired.
"I'm 99.9 per cent certain that I will stay at Inter . . . but whoever manages Real next year will be a very lucky man." – Jose Mourinho – .1 per cent of him is already in Madrid, it seems.
"I prefer to say congratulations to Manchester United – they are a good club, a big club. I have normally to be polite and to respect the other managers at the end of the season. But there have been a lot of things I don't like." – Rafa Benitez stops just short of describing Alex Ferguson as the greatest manager the game has ever seen.
More quotes of the week
"I don't know what to do any more. If Porto, for example, wants Adebayor it is not Adebayor's fault." – Eh, Emmanuel Adebayor.
"He lost his composure, stuck his finger in my face and told me to shut up. In all my time in footballno other referee has ever done that. If it happened in the pub on a Saturday night to any of you guys, the guy would have got a punch in the face." – Dundee United manager Craig Levein after a little run-in with referee Stuart Dougal who, it seems, got off quite lightly.
"If I go into a restaurant I'm thinking 'He knows what I'm eating. Will I order chips or not?'" – Newcastle's Steven Taylor on life under Alan 'Big Brother' Shearer.
Beckenbauer doesn't ease the pain
WHEN he missed an open goal for Wolfsburg recently what Cristian Zaccardo really needed was a comforting word from one of the greats of the game who was on punditry duty for the German Premiere channel.
“Even a legend like me has been there, it can happen us all,” Franz Beckenbauer might have said to ease the Italian’s pain.
But he didn’t. Instead: “If he were a young lad I would tell him to go and play the flute or the piano – or at least give up playing football. Something like that is inexcusable.”
“Ah now Franz, that’s harsh,” we sincerely hope the presenter (Karl-Heinz O’Herlihy?) replied.
Diouf pays for place in fast lane
WE fear that El Hadji Diouf has missed all this talk about Premier League footballers facing monster tax hikes next year, because by the looks of it the Blackburn man isn’t saving for a rainy day. He was photographed last week cruising around Manchester in his sparkly new €475,000 chrome Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren. The machine, apparently, can do 0-60 in 3.6 seconds. Sunderland fans might observe that not even in 90 minutes did Diouf reach that rate of knots in his unhappy spell with the club.
More quotes
"If I think of Trapattoni saying the same things to the Irish players as he did to Gattuso and Materazzi . . . no, it would've been unthinkable for me." – Marcello Lippi struggling to come to terms with the greening of Giovanni.
"We needed some of these 1-0s, we weren't winning the 1-0s before – we were either drawing or losing." – Jermaine Jenas on Spurs' habit of losing and drawing games where they scored one and conceded none.
