I honestly don't mind it. If the money is in the game (and you could argue it isn't I guess), but if it is, then I'd rather see managers, playing staff getting big wages than it being pocketed by all the directors and board members - because that's where it would go otherwise.
At the end of the day, it's no different to movie stars getting paid big bucks.
The film industry is totally different to football. Firstly it makes money. Secondly a lot of movie stars income comes from having a % of the box office and therefore if a film does well they make money if it doesn't then they do less well. In some cases they can are given a choice between a salary and a % of the profit.
The original Star Wars movie was a case in point which was hugely profitable for the studio Harrison Ford took $1,000 a week for 10 weeks shooting giving him $10,000. Alex Guinness took less salary and 2.25% of the profits he took $3.3m from the initial release and by 2000 this had risen to $85m or more than the 40 other films he appeared in combined.
Don't get me wrong I don't blame an individual for taking the money on offer but I am not going pretend that it is a good thing for the game and it does have some profoundly negative impacts on the way the game is run.
Given that nobody was holding a gun to anybody's head when the contract was signed Bilic is due what he was entitled to under the contract no argument. Looking at the article it seems he was being paid something like £5m a year. I cannot pretend to know much about the state of Saudi football but I can't imagine that a Saudi football club will generate enough income to justify that salary on a purely commercial basis.
So the owners are subsidising the club. Why? For the love of the game or perhaps not. This leads us into the murky waters of PR, politics, influence peddling or worse. Do you want football clubs to be vehicles for whatever cause a wealthy individual or sovereign wealth fund happens to be pushing? If you do well whatever happens don't let football clubs be profitable don't let them be self sustaining and competitive without owner subsidy. If you want fan ownership then they have to be all of those things as a matter of course.
The Bilic salary along with pretty much every other bloated salary is a symptom of what is wrong with the fundamental structures of the game.
