Sport Writer George Laycock examines whether Premier League footballers are truly paid too much, or whether this criticism has more malicious intentions
Disclaimer: All comments made are opinions of the writer.
Last November, the Mail on Sunday released an article which pried into the private life of Marcus Rashford. It was titled: ‘What a result! Campaigning football star Marcus Rashford has bought five luxury homes for more than £2 million.’ The Mail chose to use an image of Rashford frowning whilst dressed in a dark hoodie (carefully selected to terrify its readers). The focus was the property investment Rashford had taken on recently.
The article detailed how Rashford’s investment in property was ‘revealed’ to the public. Statistics like ‘the average house price for the street is £200,000’ are listed off with underlying resentment towards the 23-year-old’s affluence. It purposefully contrasts Rashford’s wealth, as demonstrated by his investment, with his recent campaigning against child poverty. It might as well have been titled: ‘Hypocrite Rashford nullies poor Boris into an expensive meal plan, despite being paid £200k per week!’. In the article’s comments, it is clear that readers have had this desired reaction. ‘So this guy is investing his money in property while he is lobbying the government to bankroll his pet projects through our taxes? Hmmm,’ wrote ‘sandersoni’ from London.
What fascinates me here is the disgust at a footballer being paid large sums of money
I will not waste my time explaining why it is the government’s job, and not an athlete’s, to feed hungry children. Nor will I explain why feeding these hungry children is not a ‘pet project.’ What fascinates me here is the disgust at a footballer being paid large sums of money.
Outside of the Mail, you could point to everything The Sun has published about Raheem Sterling: ‘England flop Sterling enrages fans after Iceland humiliation by showing off blinging house and fleet of supercars’ in June 2016, for instance.
Why do these tabloids not see it fit to criticise other high-earning professionals?
It is conventional wisdom that footballers earn too much money – that footballers should not earn millions each year whilst nurses struggle to turn their heating on. I agree with this. It seems wrong. I am not arguing that the job footballers do is more useful to society than those who work in teaching or in the health service.
However, we live in a capitalist economy where supply and demand dictate value. If millions of collectors want a first-edition Charizard Pokemon card, and the supply on the market is only 10, then it necessarily follows that the Charizard will be very expensive. It does not matter that it is simply a piece of card: supply and demand. The supply of Premier League quality footballers is limited.
Maybe, because of this, we should question our own capitalist system? Maybe we should try to create a system where labourers are paid in accordance with the use of their labour? This could only be created by increasing the size of the state through extortionate taxes, redistribution and complete nationalisation of all industry. What a radically Marxist position for Daily Mail to take! Can we only presume that they criticise stock-brokers, investment bankers and CFOs for the absurd salaries they take home in spite of their little use to functioning society?
No. Of course they would not criticise white-collar workers. Because they earned their wealth the ‘legitimate’ way; they were private-schooled to qualify for their positions, which they were gifted through cronyism.
Football is a pure meritocracy, in which boys from the slums of Brazil stand a fighting chance. It is not a position which one can be private-schooled into. Therefore, journalists working for right-wing newspapers find it alien and petrifying.
[Football] is not a position which one can be private-schooled into
It’s not as if becoming a Premier League footballer is an easy gig. The Business Insider did a study in 2017 which found: ‘out of all the boys who enter an academy age 9, less than half of 1% make it…only 180 of the 1,500,000 players who are playing organised youth football at any one time will make it as a Premier League pro.’ I find that academy statistic particularly revealing. Imagine if only one in 200 people specifically training to become a dentist made it!
So, turning back to the key question: why do tabloids obsessively criticise footballers for being wealthy?
I will use the sociological term ‘legitimate wealth’ in my explanation of this. ‘Legitimate wealth,’ as defined in a 2015 Huffington Post article by Edward Corcoran, is wealth ‘acquired in compliance with societal norms.’ I think that the Daily Mail, The Sun and the likes are struggling to accept football as a form of legitimate wealth: they are not exclusively white, they are not private-schooled and they have not relied on inside-contacts. Legitimate wealth, in the eyes of these tabloids, is not the property of working-class black men.
Premier League footballers are paid too much. But unless you are willing to abandon capitalism and ask the same question of other high-earners, I have to question whether you truly have a problem with the money or whether you have a problem with the people being paid.
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