Club or Country?

(11-02-2011 17:13 )lindor Wrote:  I may be sounding like an old romantic when I say that it is still the fans who pay the players' wages - although I am right of course - and yet the authorities don't give a toss about us and instead focus on England, England, England all the time to the potential detriment of our club sides' success.

Yet it could be argued that there has been no detriment to the success of the club sides if the authorities are concentrating solely on England.

Since 2005, apart from last season, an English club side has contested every Champions League Final whilst in the same period an uninspiring England were knocked out in the QF's in Germany, failed to qualify for Euro 2008 and were frankly abysmal at the last World Cup.

I would suggest that Champions League football is vastly superior to International football the problem being that it is only the same English players from the same English clubs who are exposed to this level of football and have already decided that International football is not as important to them as it is to fans of the national team.

i think its just the england players that care more about playing for their club more than their country. south american, some european, asian, african players have more respect and honour when they play for their country. they see it has a way of repaying their country back and inspiring others to do so.

Loul Deng, born in sudan, plays for chicago bulls and great britian. loul deng gained british citizenship after he and his family fled from sudan, he is repaying this by trying to get the british basketball team to the olympics next year.

my point is these players when they are young dream of playing for their boyhood club winning trophies and playing for their country winning the world cup but has they make it to the top they get more concern about their personal gain instead those boyhood dreams of winning the world cup and playing for their country. the game corrupts, certainly in this country, the innocence of these players. they get too much too soon. rooney at 16/17 looked he was "playing football at the park with his mates a smile on his face" playing for everton than it all changes at man utd longer this boyhood innocence but someone more concerned about personal wealth, from what i have seen the only player to keep this innocence is messi.

(11-02-2011 19:12 )lindor Wrote:  The only consolation I get from these ridiculously inflated wages that some of today's biggest stars are on is that just a tiny percentage of those salaries come from my own pocket.

As for the subject of the pay of the players, I'm off on one tonight, it appears to me that those who are most vociferous in their condemnation of the size of the wages are usually either Guardian* reading middle class middle management types or Daily Telegraph ex-Colonels and ex-Majors, not having a dig at you lindor, who see professional footballers as oiks and chavs and not quite the right type of person to be that well rewarded whereas if they were offered a job with similar pay they would feel that was their rightful and just reward.

It also makes me laugh when you get the mock outrage from the tabloids, who are in the main Premier League cheerleaders, about footballers' wages especially from the The Sun. I'm bloody sure that if by some miracle public opinion forced the wages down that ticket prices and Sky subscriptions would not follow suit.

I blame Jimmy Hill for getting the £20 a week maximum wage abolished and allowing these horrible working class footballers to rise above their station in life. What a tw@t.


* I read the Guardian on-line but only for the tits.

I'd hate to play for my country, the expectation & pressure is just 2 intense, one mistake and you're the focal point for every person/media to vent they hatred at.

I think it'll all changed for England players after David beckham was sent off against the argies, For someone to have people baying for blood, burning effigies of him and fans singing about raping his wife etc This was just a step 2 far. If you look back over the last decade and half it's change from 'well done lads, you tried your hardest' 2 needing to have a scapegoat everytime we lose

the problem is that the players play well week in week out for their clubs yet for their country they dont reach that standard, if they its very rarely, beckham against greece ot for the world cup qualification, that was his best ever game for england. the other 104 games werent near as good as that.

i read the dt but im not middle class. i do think the players have a responsability to behave in a manner that is repectable by not stabbing cigars into players eyes, falling out of night clubs, hitting women etc. it doent help when players play like thugs on the pitch as well as off it. ufortunatly there some players that are playing that should not bet playing football.

the england needs new a life, capello leaving in 2012 after the euros they should have someone who has been there with england in terms of competitions eg euros, world cups. play the youngsters and not the same old tired faces, there are some potentialy good players in the youth england sides some by better than the current england players but they are not getting games in the premier league or in european comps.

for some representing their country is a way of escaping trouble (players in south america from poor backgrounds, war torn countries in africa) by showing what they can do and hoping that a good side picks them.

Captain Vimes, I flick through and glance at The Mirror and The Sun at home, but I understand your point on a generic basis. Some of the things I could tell you about the exploits of the players at one particular Premiership club of medium size would get this post deleted almost as soon as I'd pressed the Post Reply button, as I have inside information from a mate who works in that town.

I certainly agree that I wouldn't turn down the wages/salaries these footballers are on given the chance, but it's not just about that. Many of these players probably do fit the description 'oik' or 'chav' and what's worse, they behave like it, unable to handle the amounts of money and time they have on their hands. Equally, there are thoroughly decent blokes who live a humble life; one T-Shirt at Old Trafford proclaims a picture of Paul Scholes with the legend: 'Get Up, Go To Work, Play The Match, Get Showered, Go Home!'. That says it all about one of Britain's finest footballers of the past twenty years.

To the list of wife beating etc that was mentioned above, I'll add Stan Collymore's infamous setting alight of £20 notes in nightclubs just to show how rich he was - total fucking contempt for normal hard-working people by people so far removed from reality that we couldn't even comprehend.

I really, really hoped that the silver lining on the World recession of the past couple of years would have forced the likes of Sky to lower their offer to the Premiership clubs, but sadly it seems that football is still recession-proof

And yes, Bigguy, of all the world's leading players Lionel Messi is the only one who behaves as if it's just about the football, and does seem to have retained his boyhood innocence.

(11-02-2011 23:15 )bigguy01 Wrote:  i read the dt but im not middle class. i do think the players have a responsability to behave in a manner that is repectable by not stabbing cigars into players eyes, falling out of night clubs, hitting women etc. it doent help when players play like thugs on the pitch as well as off it. ufortunatly there some players that are playing that should not bet playing football.

Stuff like that has always happened, all you need to do is read some of the auto biography of some of the older players to find out, it's just that in this day and age it's front and back page news and heard of alot more

(11-02-2011 23:44 )lindor Wrote:  Many of these players probably do fit the description 'oik' or 'chav' and what's worse, they behave like it, unable to handle the amounts of money and time they have on their hands. Equally, there are thoroughly decent blokes who live a humble life; one T-Shirt at Old Trafford proclaims a picture of Paul Scholes with the legend: 'Get Up, Go To Work, Play The Match, Get Showered, Go Home!'. That says it all about one of Britain's finest footballers of the past twenty years.

I disagree with the many tag. A few are probably idiots unable to handle the money and fame but I would suggest that the majority, regardless of money and remember even the guys in the lower leagues are on a decent wage, are more in the Paul Scholes mode.

Mostly they are like any cross section of society, some bad but mostly inoffensive blokes trying to get on with their lives. They make bad decisions, shag someone they shouldn't shag, drink too much on occasions, bit like the rest of us really.

As a Wolves fan I class myself as a neutral when it comes to the "big" clubs, but I always remember Ryan Giggs being injured or unavailable when it came to playing for Wales. To me he is the model professional and one of the few who has managed to balance fame with his personal life. But was this at a cost to his country.

(12-02-2011 19:08 )Mr Head Wrote:  As a Wolves fan I class myself as a neutral when it comes to the "big" clubs, but I always remember Ryan Giggs being injured or unavailable when it came to playing for Wales. To me he is the model professional and one of the few who has managed to balance fame with his personal life. But was this at a cost to his country.

I'd tend to agree with your very fair point, Mr Head!

Giggs has played for twenty years now and is often still the best player on the pitch, such is his dedication to his own personal levels of fitness etc. I saw him in Manchester city centre once with a group of mates but didn't care to approach him as I felt he was deserving of the privacy and respect for not being one of those players who often make the front pages more so than the back pages.

However, I'm pretty sure that his sparing appearances for Wales over the years have undoubtedly contributed to his still being a first-teamer on one of football's most demanding and unforgiving stages.

I'm pretty certain that, in the cold light of day, were he to ask himself the Club or Country question, then much as I'm sure he loves Wales, he would probably answer in favour of club.

But don't forget that he represented England at Schoolboy level, and one has to wonder how he might've treated international football if he had played for a country which regularly qualified for major finals; certainly he wouldn't have been afforded the long Summer breaks that he has undoubtedly benefitted from throughout his career!