It is public knowledge that football is one of the most profitable professions in the world. Year on year, sponsors and TV companies commit hefty sums of money to football clubs making coaches, agents, and players even richer.
Football is a goal oriented sport, and the game will always be won by the team that scores the most goals. Therefore one could argue that the most important player on a football field is the man whose primary job it is to win you the game; the striker.
Basic economics teaches us that the more the demand for a commodity exceeds the supply, the more the price of that commodity surges.
The number of elite strikers in existence has been on the wane for many years; meaning clubs have to compete with their chequebooks regarding both transfer fees and wages to sign quality strikers, and this is why they tend to be the highest paid players.
The 2015/16 season saw some forwards attain some astronomical goal scoring tallies, with the likes of Robert Lewandowski, Jamie Vardy, Luis Suarez and Antoine Griezmann stealing the headlines time and time again.
However, this article focuses on those strikers who posted nearly embarrassing goal stats; costing their clubs millions of pounds over the course of the year and failing to deliver. Below are 6 of the most expensive striking flops in the season gone past:
3. Mario Balotelli
Somewhere in Milan, someone decided that bringing bad boy Mario Balotelli back to AC Milan on loan was a gamble worth taking.
One year on, Super Mario’s stock is at its lowest, as more people accept that the wonder kid may not fulfil his great potential after all. In his one year at Milan, he managed to find the back of the net only 3 times, costing a cool £1.67m per goal.