Players' wages is money well spent (From Bradford Telegraph and Argus)

Players' wages is money well spent

2:33pm Sunday 15th July 2007

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There is no denying Premiership footballers earn a vast fortune in wages that make the rest of us mere mortals green with envy.

The combined monthly takings of Liverpool’s new recruits Jose Torres, Ryan Babel and Yossi Benayoun is the same I can expect to earn in a lifetime.

But is it really the national disgrace that the media would have us believe?
Nobody is saying £100,000 plus isn’t an exorbitant amount for one person to rake in on a weekly basis. It is. But it is the label of money-grabbers and overpaid prima donas that Premiership footballers are branded with by the national press that angers me.

That so many millions of pounds in TV revenue is generated in the beautiful game in the modern era is not the fault of the players.

It is burning a hole in the pockets of all the top-flight clubs and a large slice is made available for players’ wages.

That the employees actually get their fare share of the pot - a concept lost on the rest of the business world - is hardly a disgrace.

Anyone who is jealous of their earning potential should have worked a bit harder on the training field when they were younger. The Premier League does not discriminate and is an equal opportunities employer. Unlike elitist sports such as tennis or motor racing, we all start on a level playing field.

The chances of ever making it to the highest echelons of the professional game are minuscule and those who do have worked their socks off to achieve their goal. I don’t begrudge the Frank Lampards or Wayne Rooneys of the world a penny.

The players are made scapegoats in this whole charade. They are easy targets in a scandal-obsessed media jealous of the players getting their share of the television cash bonanza.

They choose to forget that it is the players who provide the entertainment which is such a turn-on to television companies.

PFA players’ representative Gordon Taylor rightly argues: “The average career of a footballer is eight years. Nobody can blame them for wanting to make as much money as they can in that time.”