Obscene wages will kill game - Best

George Best has branded players’ wages “obscene” and warned the huge rise in the top stars’ salaries will end up killing the game.

The former Manchester United and Northern Ireland star, who says his health is recovering since his liver transplant, believes the game as a whole has changed - and not for the better – since his time in the 1960s and 70s.

Best told FIFA magazine: “Some of the money being paid to players these days is obscene. When you look at the situation in this country where people are homeless and some guy can earn £100,000 a week for an hour and a half’s work, that is obscene.

“Good luck to the players; if they can get it take it – but I think it will kill the game eventually.

“Agents are starting to take over the game and they’re as important as the players – sometimes more important.

“We had agents but they were never as powerful as they are today. In those days agents handled your off-field affairs and that was it.

“When you think in my days at Manchester United we had a team with three European footballers of the year in it, and that was full of internationals, yet we still all used to jump in the same bath together, caked in dirt and filth and drinking bottles of beer.

“Nowadays of course, players have got their own baths, their own masseurs and I’m sure they are not drinking pale ale. That’s how things have changed.”

Best had a liver transplant in 2002 and though there have been several well-publicised alcohol-related incidents since, believes his health is okay.

He added: “My last test was pretty good and I’m 80% safe now. As long as I behave myself I’ll be okay. That’s always a big factor and I know that, and alcohol will never go away.

“You’re surrounded by it and it’s everywhere you go. You can get on a train, a plane or go to a supermarket or restaurant and there’s always somebody who wants to buy you a drink.

“But it’s a fact of life and you have to fight it.”