AS CASH STRAPPED STUDENTS, we all dream of a day when we can swap Efe’s for Domino’s, Freeview for Sky Plus, and Tesco’s Value Vodka for Grey Goose. So, it’s with bitter jealousy that we read of superstar footballers able to wipe their grass stained arses with £50 pound notes.
The recession has barely made a dent on the beautiful game: uber-rich Sheikhs are still desperate to get their oily hands on our precious clubs and the masses are still spending large chunks of their salary on increasingly-pricey season tickets. Barely ten years ago, Alan Shearer’s £15 million move to Newcastle was considereda huge amount to pay for a footballer; yet now it could only afford a club Kakà’s left testicle.
The Premiership’s sinistersymbiotic relationship withmoney has begun to dive to the dark side. Old Trafford’s honest and hardened warhorses Scholes and Giggs are dwindling, while poncey pantomime villains (see Cristiano Ronaldo) taint the good name of the Red Devils. Unfortunately, the infection has spread. The sudden cash injection into Manchester City, a club proud of their working class heritage, has brought petulant money guzzling whores such as Robinho, but repels respectable and hardworking superstars like Kakà. The saintly Brazilian’s recent refusal to sign his soul to the filthy rich City owners is surely a shining light at the end of a tunnel littered with Ronaldo’s wrecked Ferrari. It’s a sign that loyalty, happiness, and the thought of having to live in Manchester were enough to persuade Kaka to stay in Milan.
Footballers are stupid. It’s a fact. Why else would Robinho move to the wrong side of Manchester? So why, why, why give them insane amounts of money to destroy themselves, and potentially the world. Take a look at what the once legendary England playmaker and bone-headed boozer Gazza has been doing to the Middle East recently.
But until the world’s oil supplies are drained, sheikhs will carry on playing monopoly with football’s finest. It’s a bleak future unless we take drastic action, so let’s cull those who masturbate over money and let the Jimmy Bullards of the footballing world show how to play with no more incentive than the satisfaction of kicking a ball.
MONEY MAKES THE WORLD GO ROUND. As the £100 million barrier threatens to tumble after the Kakà debacle, this oft-spun dictum has never been more applicable to contemporary football. Why is there such surprise at the cash-swelled “beautiful game”? It is an inevitable product of modern culture, economic more than sporting: growth and progress in other areas have swelled football’s earning potential.
Merchandising, gate receipts, global media coverage, huge stadiums – magnates eyeing up football clubs see it as a business investment more than anything else. Greed is still good. The clubs themselves would be stupid to refuse the bottomless wallets of Russian millionaires or money-sodden Sheikhs. Hey, it ain’t pretty, but having a foreign sugar daddy is a sure-fire way of moving up the table. Even if having Mark Hughes as manager may not be…
As for Kakàgate – please: it was overblown by the media into a frenzy. This is a player who had signed a contract with Milan through to 2013 and previously said that he wanted to “grow old” with the rossoneri. Yes, footballers can be a fickle bunch, but they aren’t all preening, money grabbing rogues: ultimately even the offer of an eye-watering £200k a week didn’t move the star.
And Robinho, the Brazilian that DID go to Man. City? £32.5m is undoubtedly a lot of money. Yet, through all the whining over his transfer fee, some ignore the simple fact that Robinho has been talismanic for Manchester City since signing. His 11 goals in 16 Premiership games are testament to his precocious ability as a footballer – even if his recent AWOL Brazil trip might suggest a fragile mindset.
So, now is not the time to lament the death of the “beautiful game”: money and football made their wicked partnership just after the advent of the Premiership, not in 2009. There is so much at stake in Noughties football that obscene amounts of moolah, diving and inflated salaries/egos are here to stay, just part and parcel of the ultrapressurised modern game. The juggernaut rattles on; if money inexorably makes the world go round, there’s no way of turning it back.