The answer to them questions may be obvious to you, but clearly from the actions of some footballers, they are not as noticeable. You remember the age of Sir Bobby Charlton and Sir Bobby Moore, real gentlemen, who never put a foot wrong but still struggled with the low income footballer’s received back in them days. Nowadays, footballers’ salaries are so long you will mistake for it being a mobile phone number. And after that beautiful pay cheque of there’s is posted into their mansion’s letterbox, they decide to spend it on alcohol, drugs and prostitutes. Why? Every man’s dream is of having a wife, mansion and doing a job that you enjoy. It’s almost like they don’t want it.
The salary footballers get has been some what of a problem. A recent survey showed Premier League footballer’s average income per year is £676,000, four times more than a doctor performing radio therapy to treat cancer patients, five times more than a doctor who treats patients with contagious diseases and six times more than a doctor treating patients with diabetes. IT’s funny how wages show people are paid more for entertainment than for curing life-threatening illnesses. Is entertainment more important than life itself? Because that is what these salaries are suggesting. It’s wrong, it’s got to be wrong and the sooner football clubs that make the money understand this, the better.
Then what makes footballers ‘do’ what they ‘do’? The most recognised incident occurred with the Chelsea skipper and defender John Terry, who had sex with England team-mate Wayne Bridge’s fiancée several times with one time being in the back of a Range Rover after a training session. Taking football and money out of this story, this sounds so bad it could feature at the end of EastEnders with a drum roll. If not, it would have been great content for Jerry Springer. What makes this story even worst was the fact that John’s bother, Paul Terry, had done exactly the same thing with the girlfriend of QPR’s keeper, who was so distraught after hearing the news he committed suicide.
I’m utterly and literally speechless. There’s not one word, sentence or phrase that could identify how terrible and tragic that is. Although I have heard the story many times, it still makes my back chill in shock and disgrace.
It’s almost as if money opens up new, if I dare say, opportunities and areas to experiment in. You may think ‘whoa, your only example is John Terry’, well your wrong. Peter Crouch slept with a prostitute, Wayne Rooney paid for a prostitute, Ashley Cole had phone sex with a model , Joey Barton stuck a cigarette in a team-mates eye, Frank Ribbery slept with a under-aged prostitute, the list goes literally on and on. it’s almost like a disease: if your famous and rich, you have to mess your life up.
As well as off the pitch, footballer’s are just as controversial on the pitch with their contracts. I’ll refer back to Sir Bobby Charlton again. Plays had no say, no control , nothing over the money they earn: they just played football for enjoyment. We are now facing players like Wayne Rooney threatening to leave unless he gets a pay rise to £11.4 million a year. Once again, I’m speechless both for the amount he wants and disrespect to his club. Footballers should play for the enjoyment of the sport, not the money. Good examples of this is Kaka who plays for Real Madrid. He donates over half his earnings to charity. This just proves there is an answer to this corruption.
We don’t know it yet but all of these actions from footballers are given children a stereotypical view on footballers. I don’t want not one child to turn out like John Terry, Wayne Rooney or Ashley Cole. Footballers are constantly in the eyes of the public: they know the responsibility they have and the influence they have on the younger generation. Who knows, the next generation of England will want to be paid when playing for England because that is the path football is taking. If you saw someone who was having a bad influence on your child, you would want your child to stay away from that individual. Why doesn’t that theory apply with football? Do we want our children to be selfish, disrespectful and full of greed for money? Do you want your children to be like a footballer?
The problem all stems down to the money. The demand for football is high, that’s why they get paid so much. But, haven’t the clubs seen that it is having a negative impact to football generally? Think of the first three words that come into your head when I say ‘footballer’. I bet they are all unrelated to football and are off the pitch terms.
The more I think about this the more I worry for the future of football. Footballers will just get greedier and will be frowned upon more and more. Let me tell you, these stories of affairs and off-the-pitch behaviour will escalate like the salaries of footballers. The morale of footballers is lost and will be hard to find like a needle in a haystack.
Football’s future looks dismal, tragic and worrying.
But, I believe someone will find that ‘needle in the haystack’.
I’ll leave you with one question to ponder over, ‘who would you thank more: a footballer for entertaining you or a doctor for saving your life?’
I know what my answer is, What’s yours?
