The only thing that’s left is to go on a run and win several titles and trophies

If that doesn’t happen, like say if Jack had been a starter for the last five years of Arsenal’s history, would he stick around? Young athletes (since the late 90’s/early 00’s) have been so conditioned to believe that the act of winning a trophy is so much more important than the uniform in which that trophy is won that I am not sure Wilshere or anybody else that is just becoming an athlete today even understands the decision process Derek Jeter made to stay with the Yankees his entire career. Or Ryan Giggs with Manchester United, for that matter.

If Arsenal start winning trophies every year, sure, Wilshere might live up to his promise. But when they don’t (there are only four trophies every year, after all), will he stay no matter what, even when a team that does win a lot comes calling with a whole pile of cash and a recent history that has many more trophies than Arsenal? He says so now, but when I was his age I swore to anybody that would listen that I would never work a corporate job as long as I lived, and here I am 15 years into my corporate career.

I don’t hold any of this against Jack, by the way – it’s human nature, and he’s certainly entitled to do what he wants. I just doubt that a 19 year old knows what “forever” even means in a career context.

They have a “luxury tax”, which is a de-facto team-level salary ceiling, but teams are free to exceed that ceiling if they want to pay the tax. Basically, for last year, any team with a total payroll over $178 million has to pay at one of three levels: 22.5% of the amount spent over $178 million if this is a team’s first time exceeding the threshold, 30% of the amount spent over $178 million if it is the team’s second time over the threshold, or $40 million if it’s the third or more time over it.

So a team like the Yankees, with their built-in advantages of the YES Network and the biggest market in the sport, can exceed the luxury tax without really blinking an eye about it. What that means on a player level is that they can afford to overpay Jeter – his current contract is ludicrous for a player of his age/declining skill set (3y/$51m) but they don’t care because they know he’s an icon and they can afford it.

So Jeter was kind of a strange case – Jeter knew that there would be riots in the streets of NYC if he walked for less, and there was no team in baseball that would come close to offering him that kind of money (he’s 37!), so he was able to pretty much write his own deal. Any team could have stepped in and offered him equivalent money, but no teams are insane, so they didn’t.

To your point, though, you’re absolutely right. In two years, when Man City comes calling with 60 million euros, we will see if Jack’s words mean more than the average athlete’s. I don’t think they will.

And again, I don’t hold that against Jack or any athlete, really – if someone offered me orders of magnitude more money to do my exact same job in a different city, I would be gone faster than you could say SO LONG SUCKERS.