Money is not necessarily everything in the world of football

In a recent talkshow, world famous leadership expert Robin Sharma said there’s no point being the richest person in the cemetery.

This is increasingly ignored in the modern world. Fortunes are rapidly made (and lost) and those with money have status, power, and make the most noise.

In sport, money often seems to equal power and success. Football magazine FourFourTwo recently produced three lists of England’s richest in football: current owners, managers and players.

The owners’ list has those with the most money of all the categories. This is despite the large amount of cash in the game these days for players and managers.

Huge contracts for TV rights and the advent of the Champions League as a genuine competition has made a difference.

But football is still a small business: there is much more money in oil, property and financial services, at the top end at least.

And so, those who have an interest outside football (the owners) are the richest overall.

First of these is Manchester City’s Sheikh Mansour. The impact of his huge investment in the club since the 2008 takeover is starting to be felt.

City won the FA Cup in May, their first senior trophy for many years and are now a Champions League side and genuine contenders for the Premiership title.

Money has made an impact at City and has had positive impact on the team owned by number three on the list, Indian steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal.

His recent acquisition of Queen’s Park Rangers has seen an influx of players to strengthen Neil Warnock’s newly promoted squad.

These two are examples of the effect money can have on a club. And the same is true of several other names.

The most obvious of these is Russian Roman Abramovich. His purchase of Chelsea can now be seen to have reshaped the football landscape.

He is no longer alone as a football billionaire, and this has had an effect on Chelsea’s fortunes. Not because they can’t still pay large fees to attract the best players: one look at those bought in the summer will confirm this is the case. But Chelsea have real competition in the transfer market from Man City.

Further down the list is Newcastle owner Mike Ashley. In Alan Pardew, Ashley has hit on a real winning formula – and at least he has had the money to spend in searching for a winner.

There is Arsenal, where Alisher Usmanov is rated the second wealthiest and Stan Kroenke eighth.

Manchester United and Chelsea dominate top 10 players’ list, with Rio Ferdinand, Ryan Giggs and Wayne Rooney and Frank Lampard, John Terry, Didier Drogba and Fernando Torres plus Liverpool’s Steven Gerrard.

But none of them can match the two at the top of the list, Michael Owen (believed to have made good investments) and David Beckham.

The manager list is an interesting combination of working for a club with a wealthy owner ( City’s Roberto Mancini and Chelsea’s André Villas-Boas) and having been in the game longer (Sir Alex Ferguson, Arsène Wenger, Harry Redknapp and Steve Bruce.