The now infamous Fernando Torres quote that “romance is dead”, made after his big money move from Liverpool to Chelsea seemed to polarise opinion across the football world. Some could barely bring themselves to type their vitriolic response to a player that they perceived as the apex of money grabbing turncoats thus propelling El Nino above Ashley Cole into the top spot of players fans would least like to have a beer/shoot air rifles with.
Conversely, there was a vociferous constituency who credited Torres for his honesty, citing his guts at being so forthright in tackling the issue. (Ironically, it’s perhaps the only successful tackling he’s been involved with in the last 14 weeks).
They argued that the mercenary approach to work from footballers, of the top drawer variety anyway, is something most fans agree on, and have seen gradually creep into the game we all love over the last 10 years. And it’s a sadly inevitable part of the deal most of us have entered into. Amazing talent costs – literally in terms of expense, but also in terms of what gets lost when something is gained.
We’ve never had it better on many levels. The calibre of the generation of players currently in the top flight – the excitement drawn from the juxtaposition of their technical skill combined with the explosive pace that’s always been intrinsically connected with the English game, makes the Premier League, the most watchable league in the world. No contest. But this all comes at a price – literally and figuratively.
Interestingly, if you look at other sports with similar economic power to the Premier League, the story is the same. Take the NBA, across the pond in the US. Here’s a league with scores of very good players, but only a handful of great ones. Traditionally, as far as the purists are concerned, great players were scattered around reasonably evenly, so that *most* teams had their superhero, who in turn reveled very much in the idea of it being “his” team. In the last 12 months two things have happened which have, to all intents and purposes, smashed this utopian vision apart with a size 15 Air Jordan.
Heard of Lebron James? Forget Torres. This guy announced his decision to leave Cleveland, the hapless team that he’d turned single handedly from zeros to heroes – live on national television, in a show snappily titled “The Decision”. Lebron was the standard bearer for superstars doing it for love and loyalty, not money. And what made his defection – to Miami – all the more spectacular, and somewhat depressing, was that he was teaming up in Florida with two other galacticos in Chris Bosh & Dwayne Wayde. Comparatively speaking, it makes Real, Chelsea & Man City look like a League One set up.
And only last week, a second seismic NBA move happened. Carmelo Anthony – who admittedly sounds like a character from The Sopranos, but is in fact one of the best players of his generation – walked away from the Denver Nuggets, where he’d had an almost mirror image career to Lebron – to join the New York Knicks, who now have 2 superstars and have made it clear that they’re adding a third.
And in the NFL it’s even more clinical, not least because the teams make it crystal clear that their players are jewels in their crown up until the moment where they get injured/lose ability where they’re summarily dropped and moved on quicker than Simon Cowell can ignore phone calls from the act who finished 6th on the X Factor. And here’s the crunch. Contracts in the NFL get torn up all time. So if you sign for a $50 million, 5 year deal, and get cut after year 1, you don’t see a penny (or cent) or the remaining money (only the guaranteed amount). So the players, understandably, have next to no tangible concept of loyalty to a team that they know for certain, sees it all as strictly business.
Depressing stuff? Yes. Logical that billion dollar businesses breed such clinical mindsets? Of course. For the fan, the Faustian pact that we’ve all entered into – consciously or otherwise – means that this won’t change until the entire mechanic is upended and everything becomes less about money and more about other values. Of course there are exceptions, and for the romantic supporter, irrespective of club colours, these shine through and should be championed for the acts of decency that they are.
Take Gil Meche, a pitcher for the Kansas City Royals in the MLB. In January this year he walked away from a guaranteed salary of $12 million, and retired, because he knew that due to injury, he wasn’t capable of honouring his contract with a suitable level of play. (Mauricio Taricco did the same thing for West Ham a few years back, for rather less cash)
Meche could have easily clocked in every day, popped to the treatment table for a massage, driven home, repeated this for 9 months and grabbed his considerable swag. But his integrity prevented him being so, well, mercenary. His actions have helped Kansas, a small, struggling minnow, immeasurably.
The next time a player, regardless of his sport, makes a move that is seemingly so self interested in makes you grimace every time you think about it for the next year, don’t blame him. It’s what most of his contemporaries are doing, it’s what’s become expected. But while you’re doing that, raise a glass to Mr. Meche, and mutter quietly under your breath : Who says the age of romance is (completely) dead?
