Sunday 12 August 2012

How do you deal with the divas?

Two stereotypes and generalisations, following a fortnight of Olympics Games fun:

Top athletes - work incredibly hard, often rely on lottery funding, modest

Footballers - underworked, overpaid, arrogant.

The obscene amounts of money paid to footballers has destroyed part of the game for me.  It makes me feel rather uneasy. I know that some footballers do a lot for charity and some are nice guys, but the amount of money paid to kick a ball is wrong. Some say that entertainment costs and that footballers entertain - well not enough to justify such wages I'm afraid.

Football has lost it's way. The people's sport is now all about money. Manchester United is a money making machine with a football squad... simple.  In 1984/5 season, the average First Division player earned 2.5 times the average UK wage.  In 2010/11, the average Premiership player "earned" £1,162,350 a year - that's over 44 times than the average UK wage and I suspect more for most paying football fans.
 How do we deal with this problem? Wage caps don't work - they are circumvented, but they are probably the best answer. The UEFA financial fair play regulations are interesting are will hold clubs to financial constraints, but don't go far enough, soon enough.

I don't have any great answers - all I know is that a lot of people are disillusioned by football and insultingly high wages. I don't expect players to be paid in cigarettes and beer, but come on football, sort yourself out.

  
...It's just something I wanted to get off my chest.

1 comment: