I Am the Secret Footballer by The Secret Footballer

Author:The Secret Footballer [Footballer, The Secret]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Football, manchester united, secret footballer, manchester utd, observer, premiership, guardian, manchester city, arsenal, man utd, tottenham, fa cup, liverpool, man city, man united, hotspur, soccer, chelsea, premier league, spurs
ISBN: 0852653085
Amazon: B0090PSDXW
Publisher: Guardian Books
Published: 2012-08-20T00:00:00+00:00

Talking about what you earn might be considered a little vulgar, especially if nine times out of ten the people you are speaking to can only dream of making what you do. Yet when I was kicking a flat ball around a council estate with holes in my Nike hand-me-downs, I was curious about players’ wages, and as the seasons slip by, it seems fans are increasingly interested in little else. So let’s talk money.

Be honest. How many of you, when berating a player either in the pub or in the stands, bring up money? Most, I’ll bet. “Overpaid!” “Not worth it!” Rarely will anyone say the owners were mad to give him the wage in the first place. Instead, most of the anger goes towards the player, for having the sheer nerve to accept it. And this is what I don’t understand, because in any walk of life, how many people say: “You know what? I think you’re paying me too much.” And there aren’t many of us who would turn down the opportunity to leave a place of work and do the same job for somebody else if it meant a higher salary and a better standard of living for our families. So I try not to feel guilty – although I sometimes do – and I try not to feel that I have been greedy in any way. That is not to say that I don’t “get” the argument of “How much is enough?” when people question why a player earning tens of thousands of pounds a week needs to ask for £10k, £20k, £30k more. But, as far as I’m aware, it is still illegal in this country for a player to hold a gun to a chairman’s head. Shame, really.

The point I am trying to make is that football club owners, as much as players, drive wages. After all, a player can ask for as many zeros on the end of his salary as he wants but the only way he will get that money is if an owner is willing to pay it. To let you into my mind, when I find myself the subject of a transfer and subsequent contract negotiations, I try to remove all of the emotion and work on this simple principle: a group of business people have taken the decision that their club can afford to make me an offer of X amount of money over Y amount of years. If their business falls into decline, it is because those same people got their figures wrong or misjudged the market. Players can, of course, fail to live up to expectations, but can one bad signing bring down a football club?

Before I stand accused of portraying all footballers as the good guys, let me share a few things. Between you, me and the rest of the world, there are some players out there moving clubs every year to earn contract payoffs and signing-on fees. Some players see football purely in financial terms, exactly as people do in other professions.

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