Think Your Lawyer Is Bad? Try Pele’s Going Rate.

For a club or country wanting some easy PR, hiring a footballing icon to simply attend your game is a pretty surefire way of going about it. Have them sit in the owners box, drink some exceedingly expensive beverages, wave to the fans a couple times during the game, present something insignificant to someone equally as insignificant at halftime and, boom, the press is on you like white on rice. So that’s what Iranian club Persepolis attempted to do for their local derby against Esteglal, and they started right at the top with the man, the myth, the guy who can’t keep his mouth shut, Pele. As is the case so many times, all was going splendidly…until they got the bill.

Chances are this was half PR move and half “hahaha we got Pele and you don’t” one-upmanship over their fierce local rivals (think Celtic-Rangers, Roma-Lazio), so the motivation to get this done was clearly there. Didn’t work out so well.

“We had talks with Pele to bring him to Iran, but he asked for $350,000 which we cannot afford,” said the chief of Persepolis’ board of directors, Hossein Hedayati.

Hedayati said Persepolis cannot not spend ’such money’ given its current financial obligations.

I know we complain a lot about footballers and their current per-week wage demands, but Pele’s been retired for 31 years and he’s still asking for a $350k appearance fee. That’s just insane.

The funny thing is, according to wiki (I know, I know), one day of Pele is the exact same amount as they paid for a one year loan of ex-Bayern boy and Iranian NT superstar Ali Karimi. One day of Pele or one year of perhaps the best player in your home country? No brainer here. I’d take Karimi and tell Maradona there’s a sweet party in Tehran and Pele isn’t invited.

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Category: World Football

Tags: Ali Karimi, appearance fee, brazil, Esteglal, Iran, Iranian NT, Pele, Persepolis, Tehran, World Football

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