Just a quick little postette to tell everyone about the impending changes here at the Inter Offside. In addition, I thought we could take a peek at Inter's new salary load. I hope everyone is managing to get their football fix with International Friendlies and Euro Qualifiers. At least next weekend we can get back to the real thing!
Because I cant write the word "changes" without hearing this song in my head:
Now that we have that out of the way...
As many of you may have noticed over the past few months, the Offside and the World Cup Blog are slowly but surely being switched to the Disqus commenting system. Well, now it is Inter's turn. I just got an email saying that the Inter offside will switch to the new system tonight, at about 11:30 pm pacific time. If you want to see what this will look like, take a stroll over to the Italy National Team page.
As you can see, now the comments can be threaded and sorted. If you sign up with a Disqus account, you can even get email alerts when someone replies to your comment. I know, we all fear change and this will take some getting used to, but think of it this way: now users can edit their own comments and you get a little picture next to your name! How super cool is that?
I chose the old snake badge as my Disqus picture.
So, take a moment and get a Disqus account. I don't think you are required to have one to comment, but it makes your life easier if you plan to be commenting a lot (and I know you will all be commenting!).
Back to more Inter-related things.
As the do every year, La Gazzetta dello Sport has published salaries for the Serie A teams. Thanks to some players moving on and a bit of a step-down in other player's wages, Inter has reduced their wages from 150 million to just under 122 million euro:
For some reason, this year we don't get contract expiration dates. What a bother.
As we can see, there has been a general dialing back of wages for Inter. Eto'o, while he is still Inter's highest paid player, has stepped down 2.5 million. Also, a couple big-salary do-nothings, Vieira and Quaresma, have been let go. Unfortunately, no such luck for Mancini or Suazo - each one of those 3.5 and 3.2 million euros are like a dagger to the chest. Talk about death by a thousand cuts, how about 6.7 million? Yikes.
Another thing one notices straight off is that Inter now has a larger proportion of players making 1 million euro or less (16% in 2009 to 28% this year). That has to help the bottom line.
The big question now is, will Moratti offer Maicon a renewal with a wage bump this year? What do you think?
They didn't include coaches in this list, but Inter is saving quite a bit of money there as well. Gone is Mourinho's 10-million-euro salary, instead Rafa makes a much more reasonable... I want to say 5-ish million but I can't find a link and my memory is not as good as it should be... anyone? In any event, I remember thinking that the money Real Madrid paid to break Mou's contract would cover all our Rafa expenses.
A couple caveats: Although Inter no longer has the highest wage bill, that honor is returned to Milan, it could still pay the wages of 8 other clubs combined. Heck, Eto'o's wages alone would just about fund Cesena's whole squad. Also, the numbers La Gazzetta published probably dont include bonuses. I guess what I am trying to say is, although it is a step in the right direction, by Serie A standards, it is still a huge amount of cash and probably more than we know.
So, how do you think Inter's wages stack up?
FORZA INTER
Something else to think about... According to La Gazzetta, Inter has the 4th shortest team. Good things come in small packages?