In Praise Of Footballers (No, Honestly!)

At Soccerbusiness we have been reflecting yet again this week on the actions of footballers besmirching our great game.

I refer of course to Carlos Tevez’s actions (or literally his in-action) last week when he refused to come on as a sub in the Manchester City game with Bayern Munich.

It is not hard to see Tevez as typical of all footballers. Overpaid, underskilled, pampered, morally bankrupt, emotionally detached, or as Graeme Souness put it: “The embodiment of everything people think of modern footballers.”

But the truth is I’ll bet you somewhat less clear. I’ll bet you that Tevez’s team mates are just as disgusted with him as the fans were.

Top sportsmen, we are told, just want to play, “[insert name here] would want to beat his Nan at tiddlywinks” and all the other clichés, and that still holds true, despite what the media would have believe in the wake of Tevez-gate.

Of course they get paid too much, but if someone wanted to give me more money than I was worth then I wouldn’t turn it down. Yes they’ve got big houses, but deal with it. So have other people with money – and lets be honest, the only time we, as fans, care about how much a player gets paid is when they do something to upset us “[insert name here] I could do better than that for 50p a week never mind £50 grand” as blokes behind me often shout. Never does the subject of money come up when we have won.

Which perhaps says more about football fans than the players, but it also does tell us something instructive. There is still a sort of contract between fans and players, along the lines of “look, we know you are only here for the money, we know when you say we are the best fans in the world you don’t mean it, when you kiss the badge you are being insincere, but at least you could try!”

And that, when you boil it down was the line that Tevez crossed over last week. And that’s why the Manchester City fans who made their feelings so clear at Ewood Park on Saturday were so angry. They don’t really care that Tevez is on (allegedly) £240,000 a week, but they do expect him to earn his money.

The other strand of the “footballers are all deluded” argument that I find hard to stomach is that all footballers are the same. Patently obviously they are not. The Premier League footballers of the front and back pages are not representative of the entire sport, in fact, they are not representative of the overwhelming majority of the sport.

There are hundreds of thousands of footballers at all levels, including, of course the 5 and 6 a side players we deal with, the part-time non league players, the Sunday Morning players who just play for fun – they are all footballers. And they probably dislike Tevez as much as anyone.

So to use another old cliché. Don’t let one bad apple spoil the whole bad bunch.