It is not a coincidence that the most talented footballers usually come from the most humble backgrounds.
Football is extremely cost effective in that it can be played anywhere and with almost any type of sphere. As a kid I played with all sorts of footballs. Anything from newspapers rolled into a ball and bound by twine, to tin cans and even marbles were kicked along the streets.
This youthful improvisation meant that in the poorer areas football was always available in one form or another and most youngsters literally spent hours kicking a ball because there was very few counter attractions available.
In previous eras of professional football a player could perform for years at the highest level of the game and have little or no money in reserve when the light of his career slipped slowly over the main grandstand. Even in England, where the game was steeped in folklore and tradition, the simple but harsh fact of life dictated that in retirement, even the most skilful performers, those who had thrilled and captivated millions of people, simply had to seek employment wherever they could.
Men who, for a splendid but far too brief period of time, had been immensely gifted individuals capable of creating wonderful symphonies of physical splendour, inspiring imaginations and conjuring dreams into tens of thousands of humdrum lives, experienced, with a sometimes uncontrollable angst, the evaporation of their majesty amid a measured return to what was perceived as normality.
I have often attempted with whatever foresight and sagacity I could muster to portray the realities associated with professional football. Far too many contemplate the life of successful footballer to be one of grand opulence and careless profligacy. I do accept that over recent years’ money has cascaded into the game with more than an element of indecent haste.
The young men who have been the beneficiaries of this sudden financial flux find all sorts of people propagating plans and grand ideas to further embellish their not inconsiderable bank accounts. Of course, it is ego and ambition in tandem, the sum of which stimulates greed that in turn relegates the game itself into a position of secondary importance.
But this is not the players' fault. It is not they who pester banks to fork out many millions of pounds to enable a chairman or president to attempt to turn a football club into an empire. This monstrous charade is not entirely a modern machination either, as chairmen have always possessed the tendency to preside over their domain with remarkable arrogance.
Unfortunately, this predilection has been greatly expanded in these days of intense media participation and as a consequence, the ego has assumed even more importance. It is now seemingly acceptable for these men to sanction actions that, rather than appearing to create excitement and anticipation, should be interpreted as acts of extreme desperation capable of catapulting the game down a one-way dead-end street.
I do not for a moment dismiss the actuality that players have embraced this occurrence with enthusiasm. Many are the players that have stoked their chairman’s fire for self-advancement by devising contracts that take full advantage of every opportunity to magnify an already overly-inflated wage packet.
But I do offer you the proposal that the vast majority of professional footballers would be very willing to accept that the situation has become reckless and were someone to instigate plans that would decrease the exorbitant salaries and instead increase investment into schoolboy and youth development there would be surprising degree of consent within the professional ranks.
This would in turn, I suggest, allow footballers to avail of the most rewarding aspect of their profession, the opportunity to keep football in touch with its roots of being the game of the streets.
Professional football was never meant to be a middle-class pastime and it was certainly not supposed to become a toy for the idle rich. Football is there to remind us of who we are and where we belong. It is not an elitist sport. It is not in any way a reflection of the life that allows the major share of the wealth of the world to linger in the hands of a privileged few.
Football is one of the devices life has to remind us that it is not the accumulation of money that decides who or what you are but the manner in which you use your God-given talents to benefit others as much as your self.
It is a great gift to be able to inspire people. It is an even greater utilisation of that gift for the person to remain humble and thankful in his attitude towards that gift. Talent is not given to induce arrogance or greed. On the contrary, it is dispensed to give us a glimpse of humility and encourage us to demonstrate our equanimity towards those less equipped to perform with similar flair.
Hence, the angst referred to above that debilitated some in the aftermath of a glamorous career was an illustration of the tricks life can play into offering us momentary illusions of grandeur where the reality was a period of great privilege to be enjoyed and understood.
The soul suffers when frustration reigns. Too many of us concentrate on the frustration and allow it to dictate rather than allowing the soul to offer freedom from the illusions that abound in the world we inhabit.
Football at its very best is an instrument of the soul in that it allows us to soar above the doubts and worries that surround us, and it presents us with a hint, a tantalising and sometimes fleeting reminder of the real beauty of life.
