Mercenary or just human

Mercenary
adj.
1. Motivated solely by a desire for monetary or material gain.


The word mercenary has become a common term in modern sport, mainly used by fans to describe players shortly before or after they move clubs.  The word has also become common place in many sporting articles in the last decade and it is no surprise it has coincided with athletes earning potentials rocketing.

The sporting public look back and long for the golden era of athletes representing just one club during their career or playing for their home town.  The image of a young lad playing for the town in which he was born bursting with pride, fulfilling his dream and running himself into the ground with determination lives long in the minds of older sports supporters.  Sadly for many supporters today this is just a dream at the elite level of any sport in any given country.  We now live in a multicultural world where travelling in far easier and quicker than ever before, with this in mind home grown talent is facing far stronger competition.  Gone are the days where a teenager faced with competition from other children of a similar age from their county.  In the modern world they now face challenges from the whole world, due to major sporting clubs having scouting networks setup in all four corners of the world.

So with this in mind we now find are local clubs are now blessed with players from all around the world, something many supporters could only of dreamt of in the early nineties.  Sadly the modern supporter feels that some foreign players do not care or carry the same emotional tie with their beloved club.  This is then coupled with a slight bias that home grown talent offer more loyalty and will offer more determination when results are going against their club.

At the beginning of the nineties the average salary of a footballer in the English top division was approx just over one thousand pounds a week.  Now some twenty three years later it is reported the average salary is now thirty two thousand pounds a week.  This shows the incredibly rise in earnings brought about by large television and marketing contracts.  It is this growth in salaries that has now distanced your normally work class supporter from the modern day player.  Few supporters offer any sympathy or understanding to a person who earns more in one week than the average working person earns in a year.  

The real angst most supporters have with players is caused by their perceived lack of loyalty to their club.  In football the transfer window comes around twice a year and this then opens the opportunities for players to move clubs and also boost their earning potential.  Sadly one of the major impacts the transfer window system has on football is the tight timescale available for these transfers to happen.  With this is mind it then forces players to take drastic actions in a attempt to push through any move they wish to make.  It is these attempts to force a club to sell a player whom this wish to keep that causes the most irritation.  Players who then refuse to play or result to using the media to make their position at the club uncomfortable has become common place.

This believed lack of loyalty or offering less commitment than the supporters has brought about the common use of the term mercenary.  However sometimes it may well be worth looking at this situation from another view point.  What would we do if we were in a similar situation in our normal everyday life? we all have to earn a living and in that way professional athletes are no different.  Now imagine you were offered the opportunity to work for one of your employers competitors with the added incentive of earning an extra twenty percent.  Now you may feel that you enjoy your current place of work and the people you work with.  But you would then also imagine what you could use that extra income for and believe you will make new friendships should you move there.  In all honesty most people would wish to accept the offer of a increased salary.  Now some will state quite rightly that athletes are well rewarded for the endeavours and that they may well never live to spend the vast fortunes they will accrue.  So they do not really require an extra ten thousand pounds a week.  This may well also be true but just the same as many supporters they are also looking to offer financial security for the families in the future.  If you then add to this that they have a playing career of approx thirteen to fourteen years you can also understand the desire to maximise their earnings potential during this short period.  With all this in mind I believe we can now possibly understand why they wish to make these moves happen.  Sadly the methods they adopt to make them happen we cannot accept or wish to understand.  Strangely though when supporters find themselves in a reverse situation, where a player from another team adopts these methods in an attempt to join their club this is accepted and very rarely complained about.

So as the media and public love to declare athletes are greedy and driven by money and success, but in all honesty so are the vast majority of the human population.


“When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom that profit loses.” 
― Shirley Chisholm