The Ugly Game

I've always loved football..."The Beautiful Game", as it has become known. That's quite a feat for the likes of me, as some may understand, seeing as I am a 'Mackem' (that's a Sunderland supporter for those unfamiliar with the term). Like most of my fellows, over the years, I've supported my team 'through thin'. 

OK, Boss...I'll play; but only for another
£500k a week and some tongue

My love for the game is, however, now almost as empty as the Sunderland AFC trophy cabinet and this latest nonesense with Carlos Tevez's reported desire to sue his employer over a defamation issue could be a tipping point for me. Not because I have some hidden desire to see Manchester City come through as Premier League champions, but because it just underlines the whole madness of where money has taken the game. That said, I have to admit I laughed my tits off when City thumped Fergie's lot the other day. Priceless. 

I don't hanker for something akin to the "Corinthian Spirit" seeing as its origins are in public-school educated toffs who could afford to be 'amateur' as a way of going about sport because they could afford to. I have nothing whatsoever against paying people to do sport for the entertainment of the public but I have just about everything in my soul against the likes of Tevez being paid over one million pounds a month. That's more than Fred Goodwin got paid (excluding share options which, now, prosaically, are virtually worthless). Obviously, it's not just the diminutive Argentinian, there are so many more besides whose wages continue to be inflated by factors that would drive the RMT's Bob Crow to hourly orgasms.

Currently, according to the PFA, the average wage for a contracted player in the English Premier League is £676,000 per annum. To be fair to these chaps, they do have to do awful things like, er...run about on a field doing physical stuff for days on end before running about on another field for ninety minutes to the delight or opprobrium of the public who pay between £25 and £100 for the privilege of watching them. That's tough. Then there's the other stuff, like going out to clubs and getting pissed. Selling their image rights to the sports industry and celebrity magazines. Pretending to write an autobiography, aged twenty. Pretending just to be able to write...or read, come to that. Trying really hard to talk to John Motson after a game and not using cliches.  Lots of shagging...their own and other PFA members' WAGs. Hurling racial abuse (allegedly). Getting nicked for traffic offences and sexual assault. It's just a maelstrom of difficult work. How awful for them all...

Let's get back to the wage thing. £676,000 a year...average! It's easy to make silly comparisons like...the Prime Minister gets about £160,000 and has much more in the way of responsibilities. That would have been fair enough if the PM had been, say, Michael Foot or John Smith, but when it's David Cameron, who is independently wealthy, then it makes him look more the Corinthian, really, especially as he appears to be approaching the job like an enthusiastic amateur. It's better to compare a professional footballer in the English Premier League with other professionals, like nurses perhaps, or engineers. OK...no comparison in terms of wages, motivation or, one might argue, job satisfaction, seeing as most professional footballers appear to never to be satisfied with anything to do with their job, whether it's their pay, their 'boss', their adoring public, their opponents or, crucially, any referee.

There's the argument that professional footballers (and indeed other sports people) need to front-load their income seeing as their careers can be so short...maybe ten to fifteen years if they're lucky. There's a grain of truth in that to the extent that most professional footballers would be unemployable in another field [sic], but to earn an everage of almost £7m in ten years? That's just bollocks...

And let's not forget that, for the most part, professional footballers at "the top of the game" are thick as shit. There are, have been, and arguably always will be, notable exceptions. I remember Liverpool's Steve Heighway back in the seventies being touted as the only pro soccer player in the top flight with a degree, having left teaching to play football. Gary Lineker (Mr Clean) appears to be an accomplished raconteur and skilled in sports presentation, as does Alan Hansen and, even though it irks me to say so, Alan Shearer. I gather that Frank Lampard was a Latin scholar, which was a pleasant surprise; but then again, I met his dad, Frank Senior back in '75 and he was a real gent. But none of these scions will ever be the 'norm' when the likes of Wayne Rooney and John Terry run around the turf. Terry's family history is chequered to say the least and, let's face it, Rooney has all the hallmarks of becoming the next Gazza.

But they're all so "talented", aren't they? Er...no, they're not. They're fit, yes, and can kick a ball in ways that park players might only dream of but the key issue for most of the top flight of players is that...they have a brilliant agent.

Fulwell End at Roker - Kids to the Front

When I used to go to Roker Park as a kid and get squashed in the Fulwell End with about twenty thousand others (they used to pass us kids over the their heads down to the front terrace wall that I couldn't see over - but they meant well), I watched my heroes. Len Ashurst, George Mulhall, Charlie Hurley, George Herd, Jim Montgomery and, best of all, left back Cecil Irwin, always there in front of me in the first half as we defended the 'home end'. These guys were on better then average incomes, that's true. But Len used to live in a semi at the top of Dykelands Road, next door to the local TSB Bank Manager, and people could say hello to him and his team-mates in the town while they did some shopping or went to the pub. These days, a top pro might think it frighfully de trop if he was living next door to Bob Diamond ..or anyone at all come to that. You probably can't say hello to Wayne Rooney without his agent agreeing a fee up front. Half of these primadonnas can by their own estate or even a small country so as to avoid contact with the rest of humanity.

And the whole thing appears to be unstoppable. But it will stop. It will implode....it has to. Almost every top football business (they're 'clubs' only in name now) makes a loss. Manchester United, Barcelona, Real Madrid and a few others may be viable as brands and debt leverage vehicles but the rest seem to be the playthings of oligarchs, oil barons and other magnates with nothing better to do with their money...oh, and some chicken farmers who aspired to rub shoulders with the likes of Abromovic. Fools.

Sheikh Mansour - Will He Tire
of Tevez and his Like?

These 'investors' are like children and will soon be tired of their toys. If Tevez does take legal action against either Mancini or the corporate Manchester City, another question might be asked about the value of the toys once the legal bills begin to mount and contractual pay-offs are deducted from the (occasional profit and) loss account. It all has the potential to be a house of cards.

Still, there are some good people in English professional football, like Niall Quinn, but I regret that there may not be enough. The owners have agendas that are at odds with what once was a sport. The agents have agendas that are at odds with fairness and value. The players have become so detached from the real world that they have no idea what the former two groups are doing to the game as they become obsessed with their own celebrity and a misguided impression of their self-importance. I don't agree with the late Bill Shankly on one thing, as opposed to all other wonderful things he brought to the game when it was good. Football is not more important than life and death, no matter how flippant his comment at the time but was later written so large and so tragically at Hillsborough.

Football is still a sport enjoyed by hundreds of millions of spectators and players across the globe. The playing may continue for centuries but the spectacle appears doomed within a few years. I will mourn its passing but will find something else. Such is the transcience of the sports fan. There are signs that professional Rugby Union - still in its relative infancy - may go the same way. The controllers of that sport might like to learn some lessons from what is happening at the top of professional football.

And to all those kids that believe that football is a way out of what they perceive to be the tawdriness of their existences...think again. Even if you were to be the one in a million like Wayne. Just go and get a proper job and play the beautiful game like a Corinthian (only without the privileges, I'm afraid) and feel better for that.