The level of hatred thrown at footballers in the wake of Team GB's Olympic Success

[Fr0dders]

Thought i'd share with you all an article i've just read on the BBC

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19281103

A great quote at the end by Ian Holloway

Football manager and former player Ian Holloway, writing in the Daily Mirror, says the cash that has flowed into the Premier League has corrupted the beautiful game.

"These [Olympic] athletes have no *problem when they look at themselves in the mirror every morning. They play sport in its *purest form - for the glory of the game.

"I know for a fact that when our footballers were kids they played the game because they loved it for what it was. They dreamed of scoring goals at Wembley, winning trophies and becoming a hero for thousands. Then, somewhere along the line, the stars in their eyes were replaced by pound signs."

Has money corrupted the beautiful game ?

Or is it just the actions of the few spoiling it for the many ?

 

[Clewis09]

Has money corrupted the beautiful game ?

Or is it just the actions of the few spoiling it for the many ?

Supply and demand imo, if there were 100 footballers as good as Messi, the cost of Messi would decrease, and as a result, so would his wages.

Also, I bet any money (See what I did there) Ian Holloway would spend loads of money if it was at his disposal in the transfer market!

 

[Shamikebab]

It's just rubbish tbh, let's see these athletes put under the kind of media focus footballers are 365 days a year. I'd bet a large proportion of the country hadn't even heard of a lot of these athletes before the olympics, it's just not comparable.

 

[Russinating]

The only reason the media don't care about athletes is because they don't sleep with hookers, date pop singers, flaunt racist remarks and generally act like douchebags.

Cavendish won SPOTY last year and you can't say Wiggins/Pendleton/Hoy/Farah/Adlington/Daley aren't as well known as all but the top 5 premier league players.

The only reason they're not on the front cover of the Daily Mail every day is because they're normal and therefore not interesting. Has nothing to do with them being in the media simply because their footballers. When was the last time someone like Barry or Hart made the front page?

The wage difference is that millions of people watch footballers every week, whereas athletes get watched by a fraction of that every now and again unless it's the Olympics.

 

[mmj_uk]

I'm sure there are plenty of players who don't give 100% on the pitch or particularly care if their club loses/gets relegated but I think the primary area it has 'corrupted' football is in player transfers... loyalty to a particular club is virtually unheard of these days and it's become all about climbing the wage ladder.

I never thought I'd see the day when RVP wore a Man Utd shirt but when they're willing to triple his wages to Man City proportions who can blame him?

The saddest part for me about money in football is that the poorer/lesser clubs are at the mercy of the big clubs when it comes to holding onto their best players, my local League 2 club has had several 'star' players signed by Championship clubs and then been left to rot in their reserve team, we might have been promoted by now if we could have held onto them.

 

[FrankJH]

I'm sure there are plenty of players who don't give 100% on the pitch or particularly care if their club loses/gets relegated but I think the primary area it has 'corrupted' football is in player transfers... loyalty to a particular club is virtually unheard of these days and it's become all about climbing the wage ladder.

I never thought I'd see the day when RVP wore a Man Utd shirt but when they're willing to triple his wages to Man City proportions who can blame him.

How do you know, or is this based on guesswork (like the articles in the last few days)

I very much doubt Utd have offered anything like City wages (immediately)

 

[HangTime]

Was great to see the English football team in midweek, going away from home to beat the European finalists, not like these overhyped primadonnas of Team GB that failed to meet their targets in the pool and just barely scraped through in track & field (still behind the coach's target of 8 of course)...

 

[Robbo]

I don't believe football can be compared to the Olympics/athletics in general. It just can't.

 

[BaZ87]

How do you know, or is this based on guesswork (like the articles in the last few days)

I very much doubt Utd have offered anything like City wages (immediately)

Rooney's on "City wages" and I'd be surprised if Van Persie isn't earning as much as your highest paid players.

 

[Stretch]

The problem is football is a much more competitive environment and there's a lot more money in the sport. I'ts not really the players fault that they are the way they are. Clubs incentivise players to sign and play for them with huge sums of money and this starts at a very young age. Then wages and transfer fees are made very public. It's difficult not to compare yourself to others. Imagine if a similar thing was practiced in your workplace. The result would be the same. The clubs are at fault, and until they all agree to change it will only get worse.

 

[drunkenmaster]

Jesus, olympic athletes screw hookers, cheat, take drugs. There is almost certainly significantly more drugs cheats in athletics alone than football, let alone the rest.

More people, more kids play football than "play" athletics, you can't really "play" athletics, that is why. One is a physical trial, nothing more or less, another is a sport played by BILLIONS worldwide.

A sport played and watched by billions has more money in it than a sport played by very few and watched by almost no one.

The olympics has huge viewing figures, the european athletic championships gets almost nothing. Football gets 100's of millions of viewers every couple days, several times a day often 100+ times a year. Athletics gets watched for 2 weeks every 4 years.

Also no money in the olympics or athletics, what planet are you on. Sponsorships are worth millions, and LOADS of successfull olympians get rewarded by their governments, the Indian boxer got a pretty big cheque, like £10k, which is a lot for India, another guy got a mansion, another guy got a huge lighthouse.

There is plenty of money in the olympics and athletics, and a huge portion of the top winners have cheated, same goes for cycling, massively massively so for biking.

The fact is footballers are celebrities, so a footballer does something bad its in the papers for weeks, a cyclist does it, not much, why are they celebrities, because not a huge amount of people watch the tour de france, and its once a year, massively more people watch football all year long.

Do people really think Bolt LOVES running the 100metres every day, training, weight training, people think he does that for the "love of the sport.... of running 100metres". Lol, he'll enjoy the event, the training, he does it purely to win, purely because its a career and HIGHLY profitable.

For every a-hole footballer there is a-hole athlete who has cheated, beaten his wife, taken drugs, raped someone, commited some crime. There are plenty of top footballers as well.

 

[jonneymendoza]

It's just rubbish tbh, let's see these athletes put under the kind of media focus footballers are 365 days a year. I'd bet a large proportion of the country hadn't even heard of a lot of these athletes before the olympics, it's just not comparable.

Its not rubbish.

PLayers earn far too much noawadays. no such thing as loyalty either. You dont see olympic athletes swearing at each other, sleeping with hookers, racism etc etc.

they do there sport with passion. not for the money or the fame. but for awards, passion and you know, fun.

Now i am not saying all players/clubs are currupt. many are though. Our english side is a prime example.

overpaid bunch of useless individuals with no heart and passion when they wear that england shirt.

the only player of recent time that has shown heart and passion was Becham. not an amazing player by no means but the effort he puts in cannot be matched by any of the current english players.

Look at our pathetic performance in our final game against Italy in the Euro's. Look how **** and useless and lazy Rooney was? Where was the heart rooney? Where was the passion you sometimes show when you are wearing the red shirt from manchester?

 

[atpbx]

Small time bitters.

As for this loyalty thing, it must be wonderful to be one of those people who would turn down significantly more money to work someone else because of, get this, a complete stranger is emotionally invested in your workplace performance.

 

[atpbx]

Its not rubbish.

PLayers earn far too much noawadays. no such thing as loyalty either. You dont see olympic athletes swearing at each other, sleeping with hookers, racism etc etc.

they do there sport with passion. not for the money or the fame. but for awards, passion and you know, fun.

Now i am not saying all players/clubs are currupt. many are though. Our english side is a prime example.

overpaid bunch of useless individuals with no heart and passion when they wear that england shirt.
?

I take it you are of the same opinion of our largely useless track and field team at the Olympics, you know, the bit of the Olympics that actually matters?

 

[wedgie]

PLayers earn far too much noawadays. no such thing as loyalty either.

Where would you like they money to go? This argument comes up all the time and it makes so little sense to me. Football is the number one sport in the world, it generates vast amounts of money, which employees would you like to see take the lions share if not the players?

It's the players that make the game what it is, that we enjoy watching, that we actually care about. Would you really feel comfortable if the majority of our money went to the suits?

Badly managed clubs is another matter entirely, but saying players are payed too much purely because you can't handle someone being worth £100k per week in his given profession is just stupid.

 

[HangTime]

I think the problem is perhaps not that the top players earn too much, but maybe the cascade effect into 'lesser' clubs and indeed lower leagues. There is a club not a million miles from where I live at genuine risk of going under, a club that was never going to challenge for the big titles and yet was paying the likes of Ben Haim £36k/week.

Players at established premiership clubs bring in massive revenues and get handsomly rewarded for it. This is a sustainable model provided the contracts are not excessively long and/or there are performance/relegation clauses attached.

The real issue is when you see clubs that are not immune from relegation splashing out 7-digit salaries to average players, I don't blame the players for signing the deals, but it is a worry when you consider what happened to Southampton, Portsmouth, Leicester etc. Looking north of the border and without knowing all the facts my take on it is that the SPL is not a massive money spinner, the prize money is rubbish, the TV deal nothing special, effectively Rangers got good gate receipts and probably not too bad a sponsorship deal but that doesn't mean they should start spending money like an EPL club, heck I remember years ago they bought Flo for £10m and I was like "WTF?!?"

 

[wedgie]

Most of the time when I see people saying footballers are paid too much, I don't get the sense they're saying it out of concern for the game at the lower levels. More often than not it seems to be the principle of not liking people getting paid huge sums of money to play football.

 

[fez]

Its a borderline retarded argument. Its like saying "journalists don't tap phones and all bankers are stand up people". Go back to the year 2000 and ask someone whether they think journalists and bankers are alright and they will give you a very different answer to today.

If I have an affair with another woman, I am fairly certain that I won't end up on the front pages of the Times on monday. If 99.99999% of athletes at the top of their sport did the same, no one would care. How many people follow trap shooting avidly? How many people would ever know if the no 1 trap shooter had 20 affairs in the same year?

Try to look at football like you would any other career. Survey all the billionaires and millionaires in the world and you will find that in general money makes people more arrogant and willing to indulge in behaviour that the average person wouldn't condone.

We hold the olympics up as some sort of pinnacle of sports, effort and moral standing and yet we have had people cheating, trying to lose, doping and its quite widely accepted (and admitted by the athletes) that the olympics is like a roman orgy after people finish their events. Plenty have admitted cheating on their partners and doing things they shouldn't and yet we don't publicise it and we don't care because they are not footballers.

Honestly, our ability to persuade ourselves that footballers are a different animal to anyone else just reflects perfectly our hypocrisy and idiocy.

 

[Shamikebab]

Its not rubbish.

PLayers earn far too much noawadays. no such thing as loyalty either. You dont see olympic athletes swearing at each other, sleeping with hookers, racism etc etc.

Are you ******* kidding? Athletes were kicked out of the olympics for it!

And how do you know whether they do or don't swear at each other? The simple fact is they aren't in the public eye the same way footballers are, they could do all these things and we'd probably not hear about it.