Summary
- Football clubs in Europe use a combination of coaches and chartered jets to transport players for matches and tournaments.
- Wealthier teams sometimes partner with airlines to organize special flights for their players, complete with custom liveries and branding.
- Football players also fly on private jets for international matches, transfers, and personal travel, with some top players even owning their own luxurious planes.
Being a famous footballer in Europe can attract a lot of attention from the public. With this in mind, we thought we would look and see how some of the world's biggest stars get around, from private charters to having their own jets.
Coach vs Charter
Europe is home to all the top leagues in the world and, consequently, the biggest football clubs. Using the English Premier League as an example, most of the bigger clubs are pretty close to each other, which means less than a four-hour drive between, for example, Manchester and London.
For these journeys, the preferred mode of transport is a coach or a team bus, taking the players to the away city a day before the match. The team will charter a passenger jet if the traveling time is more than four hours by road, such as Brighton to Newcastle.
For European matches like the UEFA Champions League or the Conference League, teams will always charter a plane and fly together. The same rule applies to arriving a day early and staying in a hotel overnight before the match. Once the game ends, the team will take a bus to the airport and travel on the chartered jet back home.
While keeping the team together is essential, there is also a downside. This was painfully apparent in the Munich Air Disaster, which killed 11 Manchester United players and staff. The same was evident in the 1993 Zambian national football team plane crash, which saw one of the greatest African football squads perish in the Atlantic Ocean.
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Special flights
Football clubs usually charter narrowbody jets and smaller aircraft as they only travel with a squad of about 20 players, a few coaches, and other staff. However, some of the wealthiest teams go all out and leverage their partnerships with airlines to organize special flights for the players.
This year, Real Madrid's official main sponsor, Emirates, welcomed the Spanish side onboard a specially chartered Airbus A380 flight from Madrid to Riyadh for the Spanish Super Cup semi-final. The aircraft even had a special livery featuring the club's top players. A few years ago, the squad also flew on Emirates' A380 to Abu Dhabi and gave the fans a tour of the wonderful first class cabin.
Another special flight involved treble-winning Manchester City, who flew back home on Etihad Airways' City-branded Boeing 787 Dreamliner. After winning the Champions League in Istanbul, the Cityzens became the first European champions to fly home on their own branded aircraft. However, this was also the case with the Aerolíneas Argentinas A330, which flew the world cup champions to Buenos Aires in December.
How often do they fly
How often footballers fly depends on many factors, including the number of competitions a club is, the number of competitions in a particular calendar year, and individual selection by club and country. Some clubs compete in up to five competitions per season, while some players compete in more if there are international qualifiers, friendlies, or cups.
As such, clubs and players will fly several times per month to various destinations. However, given some of the distances between stadiums, some critics say football players board a number of unnecessary flights. Earlier this year, Nottingham Forest was criticized by environmentalists for flying to Blackpool, which would have been an approximately 45-minute drive. Similarly, Arsenal was once criticized for taking a 14-minute flight from London to Norwich.
When do football players fly in private jets?
Football players also fly on private jets for various reasons. One good example would be Real Madrid's Vinícius Jr, Rodrygo, and Eder Militao, who all play in Spain but represent Brazil internationally. After international matches, for Los Blancos to get their stars back home in time for domestic fixtures, they will charter a private jet to fly them back across the Atlantic.
Another time teams will charter private jets is during the transfer seasons to get prospective new players to arrive for a medical and, if all is well, to sign a contract. In other cases, football clubs sign players while on tour in other countries, so they will arrange private flights for their latest signings to join the rest of the squad.
Some of the world's top players, like Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, and Neymar, make millions of dollars a year. They have invested a lot of their earnings in owning private planes and a crew to take them where ever they want. Of all of them, no one comes close to 37-year-old Cristiano Ronaldo, who now owns two luxurious jets; a $65.5 million Gulfstream G650 and a $25 million Gulfstream G200. Some reports suggest that he eventually found a buyer for the latter.
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