© __Lolo__ (Flickr) Ferrari
© __Lolo__ (Flickr)
The standard line of argument from those who think that professional footballers are not entitled to their riches runs that soldiers/firemen/doctors (common examples) work much longer hours, in worse conditions, risking/saving lives, for far less money.It would be a fruitless, not to mention silly, attempt to say that people who ‘just kick some leather around’ are of more worth than people who work in these noble professions (or others).
What is worth considering though, is that football is extremely important to millions, even billions worldwide. In the UK, around 7 million people are recorded as playing football and that does not include casual players. Football fills the back, even front pages, fills stadia in their tens of thousands, is used as a vehicle to sell innumerable merchandise and even makes and breaks relationships.
Also, it provides hope; such an empowering feeling as Obama showed. At the risk of sounding patronising, this is especially true of developing countries and definitely is of a township visited in South Africa.
So, footballers merely have a different, more intangible worth to that of, say, doctors. So this justifies the respective wages being roughly equivalent, but what makes footballers’ wages so much higher? Well, this is the fault of society at large.
For better or for worse, the UK is a (generally) capitalist society, which believe it or not is founded on the idea that ‘what the people want, the people get. So, what elevates players’ wages above doctors, say, is the capitalist cornerstone which pays little to no interest in morality – supply and demand. Football organisations are generally just ‘supplying’ football in various forms to sate ‘demand’ which is manifested in the continual buying of sports magazines and papers, tickets, merchandise and the list goes on…
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