Spoilt Little Rich Boys?
Are footballers really the avaricious, spoiled mercenaries we make them out to be?
Aren’t they, when all’s said and done, simply the most visible of our generation’s self-made men? We all admire an entrepreneur; someone born with a skill who has worked hard to earn themselves the kind of life they wanted.
When it’s a footballer, it’s different, apparently. All they do is play a game. A triviality enjoyed by thousands every weekend. Most would kill to do something we love for a living, let alone such an overblown living as our Premiership stars make. Never mind that they too were born with a skill that they’ve worked and trained their entire lives to hone into the skill they show now. Never mind that; it’s only a game.
Football isn’t the only industry to pay young people a lot, of course. Yet we don’t hear shouts to cap the earnings of talented young city traders; and we surely don’t doubt that just as many of them are obnoxious idiots. Hollywood actors, despite many being visibly unhinged , don’t bring the murmurs of discontent that footballers do. We seem to prefer our footballers poor. That way they’re the working-class heroes of old, not the nouveau-riche upstarts whom the wealthy resent and the rest of us can’t relate to.
A salary cap may, of course, preserve young players work ethic; and also stop the dominance of superclubs like Chelsea luring all the big names in world football to their club with exorbitant wages.
It might well work, on both counts- but honestly, would Craig Bellamy be less likely to fight in nightclubs just because his wages are reduced? Would Keiron Dyer be any less inclined to urinate at a bar in a nightclub if he earned £10,000 a week less? Somehow I doubt it. Titus Bramble would have still demolished a garden wall in sleepy Newton Flotman this year- he might just not have been driving a BMW (with 6 passengers in high spirits en route to a nightclub he could have crashed a milk float). And if Chelsea weren’t allowed to pay Michael Ballack’s £130,000 a week, he’d have gone to Spain instead, with all the other stars we take for granted.
Wigan’s Chairman Dave Whelan is all in favour, citing salary cap successes in both codes of rugby- but they protect clubs from themselves, stopping teams being bankrupted by their own ambition in a fledgling professional game that generates only a fraction of football’s revenue.
And therein lies the point- football’s revenue is so massive, especially in the top flight, that they can afford it. They operate in a massively wealthy industry, and so, by default, the people working within it get paid more than those in other, less lucrative industries.
Players like Ashley Cole do sound ludicrously ungrateful and vain when they talk about “deserving” an extra £30,000 a week, especially in Cole’s case from a club who had nurtured him from childhood. But let’s be clear- Cole is not comparing himself to the “normal“ folks who watch him from the terraces every week. He is a footballer, with one shot at a short career, touted as the best in the world in his position. He’s comparing himself to other footballers living and working within the same bubble. He doesn’t believe himself to be several million times better than Dixie Dean or Stanley Matthews; yet our sporting elders are never happier than when pointing out that yesteryear’s heroes were dirt poor and ‘played for the love of football.’ But if offered riches in return for playing the game they loved, would they have said no? Footballers’ Wives wouldn’t work so well in a mid-terrace Barnsley miner’s cottage- and we’d all be the losers for that.
Aren’t they, when all’s said and done, simply the most visible of our generation’s self-made men? We all admire an entrepreneur; someone born with a skill who has worked hard to earn themselves the kind of life they wanted.
When it’s a footballer, it’s different, apparently. All they do is play a game. A triviality enjoyed by thousands every weekend. Most would kill to do something we love for a living, let alone such an overblown living as our Premiership stars make. Never mind that they too were born with a skill that they’ve worked and trained their entire lives to hone into the skill they show now. Never mind that; it’s only a game.
Football isn’t the only industry to pay young people a lot, of course. Yet we don’t hear shouts to cap the earnings of talented young city traders; and we surely don’t doubt that just as many of them are obnoxious idiots. Hollywood actors, despite many being visibly unhinged , don’t bring the murmurs of discontent that footballers do. We seem to prefer our footballers poor. That way they’re the working-class heroes of old, not the nouveau-riche upstarts whom the wealthy resent and the rest of us can’t relate to.
A salary cap may, of course, preserve young players work ethic; and also stop the dominance of superclubs like Chelsea luring all the big names in world football to their club with exorbitant wages.
It might well work, on both counts- but honestly, would Craig Bellamy be less likely to fight in nightclubs just because his wages are reduced? Would Keiron Dyer be any less inclined to urinate at a bar in a nightclub if he earned £10,000 a week less? Somehow I doubt it. Titus Bramble would have still demolished a garden wall in sleepy Newton Flotman this year- he might just not have been driving a BMW (with 6 passengers in high spirits en route to a nightclub he could have crashed a milk float). And if Chelsea weren’t allowed to pay Michael Ballack’s £130,000 a week, he’d have gone to Spain instead, with all the other stars we take for granted.
Wigan’s Chairman Dave Whelan is all in favour, citing salary cap successes in both codes of rugby- but they protect clubs from themselves, stopping teams being bankrupted by their own ambition in a fledgling professional game that generates only a fraction of football’s revenue.
And therein lies the point- football’s revenue is so massive, especially in the top flight, that they can afford it. They operate in a massively wealthy industry, and so, by default, the people working within it get paid more than those in other, less lucrative industries.
Players like Ashley Cole do sound ludicrously ungrateful and vain when they talk about “deserving” an extra £30,000 a week, especially in Cole’s case from a club who had nurtured him from childhood. But let’s be clear- Cole is not comparing himself to the “normal“ folks who watch him from the terraces every week. He is a footballer, with one shot at a short career, touted as the best in the world in his position. He’s comparing himself to other footballers living and working within the same bubble. He doesn’t believe himself to be several million times better than Dixie Dean or Stanley Matthews; yet our sporting elders are never happier than when pointing out that yesteryear’s heroes were dirt poor and ‘played for the love of football.’ But if offered riches in return for playing the game they loved, would they have said no? Footballers’ Wives wouldn’t work so well in a mid-terrace Barnsley miner’s cottage- and we’d all be the losers for that.
Labels: Sport
posted by Matt at 6:49 pm
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