One of the football tragedies is to see a professional player, who earned millions of cash in foreign currency, a celebrity during his active football career, only for him to end up as a liability after retirement from the beautiful game.
This picture of doom is not alien to most followers and football stakeholders in Nigeria and Africa. It can be shocking and pathetic to see a once idolised football star looking tattered and battered, radiating a figure of poverty that he thought he had conquered when he signed that lucrative contract worth millions of dollars for a top club in Europe.
What happened to all the millions he made as a professional footballer? Where are the luxury cars he once rocked the city with, his expensive designer’s wristwatches and what about the private jet? Questions begging for answers in the hearts of so many people.
However, the answers to these questions lie in the financial discipline of professional players while in active service in the game says Tijani Babangida, former Super Eagles wing wizard in an exclusive interview with Opera News Hub.
Babangida, a former player of Ajax Amsterdam revealed that he still earns millions monthly from the Netherlands, 14 years after his retirement as a professional footballer due to his financial prudence and the pension scheme operated in the country.
The pension scheme in Holland made it compulsory for professional players to save part of their earnings.
“Every month, I get money from the Netherlands. Millions of naira and I have the papers to prove this. I invested part of the money I earned while playing in the Netherland to the pension scheme. This money is from my own pension savings,” Babangida said.
“There are three types of payment that a retired player is entitled to. A retired player can be paid €10,000.00, €7,500 or €5,000 depending on the pension saving scheme he chose,” he added.
“The least a retired player can take every month is €5,000, which is equivalent to N2m in Nigerian currency. Mine is €10,000 euros every month, which is N4m monthly, 14 years after I retired from football.
“It will shock you to let you know that most of the young Nigerian professional players in Europe are not earning what I earn as my retirement benefit every month. Only the top Nigerian players, especially those in the present Super Eagles earn more than me now,” he said.
Babangida, who is now the President of National Association of Nigeria Professional Footballers (NANPF), said further that former professional footballers that squandered the money they earned have tendencies to be suicidal and often sink into chronic depression.
“Few former players in Europe have committed suicide due to frustration of poverty and their wives divorcing them, which led them to a deadly state of depression, Babangida continued.
The NANPF President admonished Nigerian professional footballers to be financially disciplined and always think of having a better retirement plan to fall back on after leaving football.
“What I tell Nigerian professional players is that, play the football and let the Players’ Union and the financial institutions think about investing your money.
“If players can be compelled to compulsory savings of 45% of their income as it is done in the Netherlands, this will definitely help them when their strengths have gone from the game.
“When I was in active football, I saw some of my colleagues abused money. Some spent $2m on frivolous things, not on investment. Some were busy organising parties, attending nite clubs, where they spent woefully on exotic wine and today, they are languishing in poverty.
“This was not my situation. I saved between 60 -65% of what I earned at that time. The pension fund scheme in the Netherlands held the money in conjunction with the Players’ Union in the country.
“If this football pension scheme is implemented in Nigeria and the players are fully involved, their lives will still flourish even after retirement.
“This is the system I want Nigerian players in the league to enjoy, but what these players do is to look at you with total lack of understanding of what life holds for them in retirement.
“My heart is heavy for many Nigerian players when I think of their retirement. Only 10% of these players are willing to invest in a pension scheme that will better their lives in retirement,” he concluded.
