My questions were: 1) is this an established metric that’s commonly used to predict football (soccer) results and 2) what salary are we talking about, the amount the nation plays to its team’s players (e.g. Brazil pays more than England) or the amount a nation’s players earn on their club teams (e.g. Neymar earns more at PSG than Rooney does for Everton)?
(2) the discussion is naturally about how much they earn for their clubs presently. National teams pay no salary and many top players do not, and in some cases, have never played in their birth country's own league.
This is not even close to true.
https://www.totalsportek.com/money/footballers-salaries-with...
https://www.quora.com/How-much-are-football-players-paid-for...