Who do you think should earn one of the highest salaries in the country? You will most likely think of someone essential to our country as a whole: the Prime Minister; or someone who saves lives every day, a firefighter perhaps or a doctor. However, there are people all over the world who earn more in a week than some of them earn every year. Footballers. Is this really fair? Is it just me, or is it horribly unfair that athletes like Messi get paid so much just to play football for a few hours every week? Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essayLet's look at how much footballers get paid compared to other jobs. Top footballers like Wayne Rooney and David Beckham can be paid up to 1,048 times more than the average firefighter (who gets £25,000 a year). Lionel Messi, the highest paid footballer in the world, is paid more than 193 times more each year than David Cameron, who rules the entire United Kingdom! I kind of like football, but by doing this we are saying that we value these sports people more than other people that we just couldn't do without. Messi is paid £27.5 million a year, and the UK's highest-paid football star, Rooney, is paid 70p every second! As you read this editorial he was probably paid close to £100! You have to admit, the value of today's footballers is borderline ridiculous. Moreover, footballers often lead extravagant lives and waste their money which is actually profitable. I'm sure we've all, at some point, wished that things weren't so tight, that we had a little more money, or even that we were rich! Money is central to many people's lives, but if you were given £30 million every year, what would you want to do with it? After a while, rooms full of stuff can be depressing, so do footballers just let the money in their bank accounts pile up? Lionel Messi has an extensive car collection, including cars such as Ferraris and other supercar models. But how many of these cars will the star actually drive? And how many will he buy, just for the thrill of receiving something new – like a 4 year old every time he gets a new toy. I'm sure if these stars were paid a few million less each year it would have very little impact on their lives, but for families in developing countries who survive on less than 10p a day it could differentiate between life and death. Charities that support families like these are often in desperate need of funds – and I'm talking thousands. But if major football clubs donated just £1 million a year to charity, it could mean a radical transformation in many people's lives, while the footballers themselves would be relatively unaffected. The Water Aid charity could use £1m to help more than 66,000 people gain access to clean water, improved sanitation and hygiene, while the RSPCA could buy 20,000 vans inspectors, equipped with first aid kits for animals. Hundreds of charities around the world could surely find a better use for the massive sums paid to footballers. So, should footballers receive these colossal sums?.