“Conspicuous consumption runs through soccer’s billion-dollar transfer market. Club executives hold meetings in deluxe suites in the finest hotels in London, Monte Carlo and Milan: the Connaught, the Méridien, the Palazzo Parigi. There, they haggle with agents in tailored suits over eye-watering transfer fees, lavish salaries and towering commissions. The players being traded sink into the plush leather seats of private jets to travel between clubs, before signing contracts worth tens of millions of dollars in sumptuous, state-of-the-art training facilities. …”
NY Times