11:21am Wednesday 10th September 2008
By Lee Aspinall
Footballers are being portrayed to the public as overpaid, inconsiderate people. A prime example of this is Manchester United’s Cristiano Ronaldo.
There has been a lot of speculation about the winger’s future, and a possible move to Spanish giants Real Madrid, or even closest rivals Manchester City! A lot of sources said Ronaldo would be leaving for Real and would earn a ridiculous amount of money, in excess of £75 million.
To footballers, football is their profession and they should enjoy the game while they can. Footballers don’t realise that every child at a young age wants to be a footballer and they should count themselves lucky that they are among the chosen few.
Pundits are suggesting that footballers start thinking about the spirit of the game and not think about money all the time.
One footballer in particular who plays to the spirit of the game is another Manchester United player, Wayne Rooney. He loves to play the game, doesn’t care about the money and wants to win a football match fairly.
Also, corruption in football has been a major issue in the sport. Agents are being criticised for thinking about the money they’re going to earn and not helping his or her client through the tricky time of the transfer window, and all the speculation that comes with the business.
All of these negative elements suggest the game of football is in decline, and it is having a big impact on the children’s side of the game. Out of the 12 million children who live in the UK, just over four million play football. That is a huge decrease from a few years ago when nearly six million were playing football.
Apart from the game’s role models, the professionals, the FA have been criticised for not investing enough money into the grassroots level of the game. Over the past couple of months, they’ve having being contributing significantly by drawing up plans to make high-tech facilities available for every budding footballer in the country.
My question is, are they doing this out of the goodness of their heart or are they doing it to shut up all those who criticise them?
The FA are trying to help budding young English footballers. A discussion among the FA and UEFA is that they want to limit the number of foreign players one team has to six. This will give the young talented English footballers a chance to maybe break into the first team and help the development of the English game because it will give the England manager, Fabio Capello, more options for his team.
Maybe if the academies were giving the first team managers more of a heads up on the top youngsters, then they wouldn’t buy more foreign players. This way, they can then spend a good chunk of the money on producing high-tech facilities so the English game can become the force it once was again.
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