http://www.goal.com/en/news/723/ser...tsel-greedy-footballers-in-their?ICID=AR_RS_2
Interesting reflecting on this article. Tevez moving to China makes sense given his age and knowing that he has achieved so much in his career. However, it is weird that players like Oscar and Witsel would make this choice. They are pretty much throwing their careers away. The standard of football in China is worse than the USA or many other of these countries that lure these top players. This is because each CSL club can only have 4 non Asian foreigners on their squads with the rest being Chinese nationals. China has failed to qualify for the last few world cups and are not even close to the levels of Korea and Japan in terms of their local talent. Of course this will eventually change, but not within the time span of their careers.
So then there is the money. Lets take Witsel. Apparently we were willing to offer him a salary of 4.5m. The Chinese club will offer 18m. However, in Italy they speak of NET salary while in China they are quoting gross figures. So in effect he would be earning 2.5x what he would earn in Italy. When his contract expires, he will be 31, nobody in China will want him because they will be chasing the next big thing for their 4 foreigners a side quota and no-one in Europe will want him either. He will go back and earn far less than he did in Europe. If he went to Europe or England etc, over the course of his carreer he probably would have earned similar amount then.
So over the course of his career, he will probably earn marginally more and achieved nothing. Oscar's situation is even worse.
As I said, if you are in your early to mid 30s, it makes total sense.
My point is, not only are these players who go to China throwing their careers away, I would also argue that they are not getting that much more financially if they leave at too young an age. Poor decision making and poor advice from their greedy agents.