Rooney Signs New 5 Year Deal With Manchester United
For around the first 100 years of their existence professional footballers were treated much like workers in other industries. The employers held most of the cards and players received a rough deal. They had barely adequate pay, lacked influence and no real freedom of movement.
Now, football has taken a turn for the worse. Players are payed ridiculous amounts of money (Rooney recieves around £250k per week), and even this doesn't satisfy them. Firstly, they get paid loads and are expected to do what the club wants them to do, this is how football used to be, why has it changed? Simple, player power has developed. Since clubs decided to pay their Key Players outstanding amounts of money players have started to not live up to the standards expected.
In the early 1950s player wages increased to £20. This was £5 more than the regular weekly wage of a normal working class citizen. How things have changed! The players now recieve what they want, when they want... Player Power!
Players rights are now at no end. If they want, they can insist on sticking to the length of their contract being respected. We have had multi-millionaire players who prefer to sit on the bench for years and collect a fortune rather than be transferred. Others choose to see out their contract and leave to stuff their already full pockets' on anything they desire
If a player decides to break his contract and move on – to play in Europe or, in Tevez's case, to be closer to his family, the Club can do nothing other than sell the player. Some can be real reasons, homesickness. However, most of the time they are rubbish, the player just wants to earn more money.
Fans can try all they want to keep the player at the club, e.g. Cristiano Ronaldo, but in all truth the player doesn't give a toss. All he wants is to move to a bigger club, if you can get much bigger than Man Utd, and rake in the cash.
Player power has proven a big topic in the news lately, Carlos Tevez was eventually persuaded by Roberto Mancini to stay without a wage rise, but players like Rooney need to get their priorities straight. You signed a contract stick with it, and live with it!
Now I ask you, my readers, what is your view on this topic. Do you believe player power is a huge aspect of todays game? What do you think will happen next? Will players continue to ask for more wages or move? What do you think?
FIFA should do something about this, this way the rich clubs will be at top and the clubs with lessfinancial capacity will lose their best players as they want to have better wages.
ReplyDeleteFootball is now a buisness not a game, and this should change, players should have love to the shirt they`re wearing, not for their wages!
Fully agree with you Ricardo however, now that owners such as Roman Abramovich have taken over clubs with their wealth of cash, players expect to be payed ludicrous amounts of money. Thankfully there are some players that will stay loyal to their club e.g. Messi - he will never leave Barcelona unless a huge family issue occurs. If only there were more players like him!
ReplyDeleteThat's not the best example because Messi's only club has been the best in Spain arguably. If he was at Betis then I reckon he would have been bought by one of the bigger teams. Also Messi earns ridiculous amounts of wages, just like quite a few Barcelona and Real Madrid players.
ReplyDeleteArsenal is a better example since they spend a lot less on wages due to a strict wage structure in place. I don't think there is one person above 100k per week apart from maybe Cesc.