Players’ freedom is slavery*
By
Mickey Blue Eyes

*Due acknowledgement to George Orwell’s ‘1984.’

“I acted so tragic the house rose like magic,
The audience yelled ‘You’re sublime.’
They made me a present of Mornington Crescent
They threw it a brick at a time.”
W.F.HARGREAVES – ‘The Night I Appeared as Macbeth’ (1922 song).

Freedom – ah yes, we all want it, but how many are willing to pay the price?

There was an interesting poll in the USA recently. A small sample of opinions was asked, “Would you swap the Bill of Rights for more security?” While there was no indication if any of the participants even knew what the Bill of Rights was, eighty percent voted “Yes.” This is disturbing news of the right-wing times in which we live.

Because, as any fewl no, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Time to get the physics calculators out, people, while realizing much of what is said here also applies to other professional sports. However, for the purposes of this essay I will deal only with players’ freedom. Holistically speaking there are of course many other affecting issues but you can’t get everything into the available space. And then there’s the element of chance………………

Freedom is of course a main source of debate for the human species ever since we sought shelter in caves and started speaking instead of grunting. The trivia of footy has it in macrocosm in the subject of players’ contracts. The players are surely entitled to their freedom of movement as much as anyone else – but what does it do to the game as a spectacle or community activity? How can you build or plan long term for a team if the players are going to be here today and, relatively speaking, gone tomorrow? Is a community activity even desirable? Where does loyalty figure in this? How much money is enough? Is the game worth having at all if it becomes merely a transition point for exchange of finance?

Firstly it needs to be said the players are much fitter and their average individual skills are far better than they have ever been. Each match is an all-round better spectacle than it was even ten years ago, though unsuccessful clubs would probably argue the opposite out of pique. Coaching and management techniques are much more scientific, scouting and talent spotting more widespread. These days there are many more chances for genuine young talent to break through. Every professional club is on the lookout for the star of tomorrow and ready to see them through to full realization of their abilities. And yet despite all this there is a discernible sense of dissatisfaction with the game amongst most sensible fans, owners and administrators. Which of course excludes the perennial useless whining of the tiny destructive minority I have dubbed the Melledrew Tendency.

The central question, then, is how such contractual freedom has affected the game as a spectacle, if at all, and whether the improvements noted above are due to social and sports evolution or contractual tinkering.

In my view the only direct playing affects have been adverse. Improvements on the other hand are due to the natural survival inclination of most human beings to make progress, an inclination that sometimes stops and stutters and occasionally even takes a backward step but which nevertheless tries to improve its lot or technique. We all have such experience. Virtually all the playing improvements have happened through a normal wish to have a valid edge in healthy competition. In the case of footy I do not believe players’ freedom of contract has added anything to the professional GAME. It was an essential and desirable social evolution in a relatively free society, that’s all. But unfortunately it has led to quicker movement between clubs and thus less chance of a “growing together” of fans and team. The “community spectacle” has therefore suffered and been thrust into the background as the game has become a milk cow for spivs. It has become a gossipy farmyard with the cow’s udders continually buzzed by assorted blood-sucking flies. Of course such a popular pursuit has always attracted doubtful characters and always will. I maintain it has never been so bad as it is now and it is likely to get much worse if allowed to develop along the same lines.

In present circumstances most leading players are offered a five years contract. Superficially this offers security to both sides. But it is usually de facto almost worthless. Playing form still fluctuates and this in turn increases or decreases the notional “value” of individual players. “Values” are also affected by off-field events such as Leeds and others have encountered. I have no idea of the empirical data but it would be interesting to know how many five years contracts are actually seen out to their full extent at top level. My guess is, not many. I sense the reality is you are lucky to see two years of one hundred percent effort from players holding such contracts, less if you are unlucky. After that, both sides are looking to either renewal or cashing in on “values.” Naturally this requires a lead-in time, hence pre-contract agreements. In these conditions form is bound to suffer whether intentional or not. A player looking for a move is unlikely to risk injury and his earning potential. Similarly the club won’t want him injured if a large profit is in prospect. If there are several players’ contracts at a similar stage it cannot help but cause uncertainty in the dressing room.

Obviously this set of circumstances applies with greater intensity to players on lesser contracts. The irony is, lower down the league where earnings are relatively less the fear of unemployment means there is relatively less conflict. But such fear means just as much uncertainty and apprehension as it does for the average employee anywhere in any occupation. The horrors of the retain-and-transfer system (see below) have been replaced with equal horrors at the other end of the scale, but with the added affect of mere financial opportunism. None of it is healthy, none of it will serve the game well.

And of course while such uncertainty exists both sides are going to play at so-called public relations. Leaks and lies abound, the truth at a premium. No club or player is immune. In the meantime the gobshite media, like the gobshite agents, make a disgusting vicarious living off the backs of genuine sports talent.

Prior to freedom of contract we had the execrable retain-and-transfer system that tied a professional player to a club for life. This was briefly challenged after the Second World War when first class players like Neil Franklin and Charlie Mitten went abroad to earn more without paying any attention to their clubs. It was a necessarily challenging and courageous thing to do, but also doomed to failure. Many of the fans saw it as treachery while unwilling to tolerate the same kind of feudal system in their own lives. It was another twenty years before George Eastham took up the cudgels again and succeeded in his efforts to leave Newcastle, and yet again over twenty more years before everything started to get seriously legal. Then came the European Union and the Bosman precedent. The players’ rights could no longer be denied.

The retain-and-transfer system was as horrible as you could conceive. Yet it provided a sort of stability. Unfortunately it was the sort of stability you identify with slavery in the southern United States, pre-Civil War. Few fans saw it that way because their clubs were viewed strictly as a local collective organism to which they had devoted large parts of their emotional lives. This mostly extended to the boardroom too where directors saw it as achieving social status not as a money-making opportunity. The balance was undoubtedly achieved at the expense of the players and their earnings. The overall result was players stayed at clubs for longer periods, or until their first class playing careers were over. But of course none of it stopped the movement of players. City clubs with more money through larger gates still bought players from other clubs. However it is worth noting it took about fifty-five years for the transfer record to go from £1,000 for Alf Common to £40,000 for Tommy Taylor. During the following fifty years the record went to £30 million. It might be worthwhile for some Suit to analyse how those figures relate to social values and inflation in each era and whether they are proportionate or not.

Shorn of morality, the above-mentioned stability had its merits. If you can ignore the awful defects, which you shouldn’t, it isn’t too difficult to divine what they were. Owners, directors, players and fans really did have relatively more of a communal sense. The degree of self-delusion or ambition might vary from club to club but the SENSE was real enough. Good managers were able to build great teams and hold onto their players longer even though a first class playing career doesn’t seem to have extended much beyond what it always has been. Fitness and training techniques may have improved hugely but it hasn’t made any difference to the longevity or otherwise of the athletic human frame. By the time of his thirtieth birthday the average player has seen his best years, Indian Summer notwithstanding. Therefore, who in their fair right minds could deny the players the opportunity for proportionate share and rights in the money they help generate? After all is said and done they are the reason we pay to watch the spectacle. Where it gets difficult is they are not the MAIN reason. The MAIN reason remains as it always has been – loyalty to the club. Which is why economists are useless on this subject, mere technicians who allegedly keep the books tidy and the bank manager at bay. Even gifted men like Adam Smith and Karl Marx couldn’t fully explain the fact of human loyalty.

Therein lies the main problem of freedom of contract. It helps negate any sense of loyalty. Everything is reduced to columns of figures, which in turn eliminates – or tries to eliminate – human feelings. Once that is gone, what is the sense of supporting a club, ANY club? Why bother? What are you actually supporting? A building? A number of athletes who will one day leave? Owners and directors who will one day change? Shareholders? Spivs trying to suck the lifeblood out of the club and thereby the fans?

The logical conclusion to players’ freedom of contract is an equal “fans’ freedom of contract.” That is, a selfish single-minded concern for their own emotional and financial commitment. And as we all know that can vary wildly from fan to fan and circumstance to circumstance. At one end of the scale there is the idealized (and totally unreal) portrait of the game-loving totally fair individual who appreciates good play from whoever provides it. At the other end there is the empty-headed opportunist cynic who hardly ever goes to the game but spends some time jeering – probably through some sort of emotional envy at the simple commitment – at those who indulge it as a harmless hobby. Outside of this are the spivs, racists and crooks trying to rip off everybody for their own purposes, plus the oddbods and weirdoes who go to make up the Melledrew Tendency. But once even the sensible ones decide the only point to paying their money is some sort of emotional gain through victory at any cost…………………then anarchy looms. The game will become unacceptably psychotic instead of merely mildly neurotic. We have already seen where that leads us. Anybody who doubts this possibility need only research the Blues and Greens and how they evolved from games in the Roman Empire or the growth of lethal racist hooliganism between the 60s and the 90s.

Another logical conclusion is the establishment of club or team franchises along the lines of the US model. If players and fans can have “freedom of contract” why not owners? After all, it’s “their” money used for purchase. Which of course leaves the door open for relocation of clubs far from their roots virtually willy-nilly at the behest of temporary owners. Do not think I exaggerate. The unhappy precedent has already been set by Wimbledon’s move to Milton Keynes. In fact our own club history is based upon such a split and move during the early years, albeit still within the locale, though happily the game’s early organizers saw the dangers and legislated against that and the threat which has now almost overwhelmed administration of the game as a communal activity. Times have changed, and arguably not for the better.

So the fact is players’ freedom of contract has to be seen in the perspective of our times and society. It is impossible to turn the clock back but it is not impossible to legislate and/or organize differently. In which case it will be necessary to ensure some sort of balance is restored IF the fans want the game to have some sort of freedom from the new generation of spivs, liars and hangers-on. In my opinion if the fans decide they don’t want that then the game simply won’t be worth having and I will turn my back on the professional game without any regrets whatever. “Rollerball” will have arrived and we can hand the game to the Melledrew Tendency.

The above brief account shows the game has swung from one extreme to the other, from “club power” to “player power.” Along the way the fans got ignored while two factions fought out who was to have their money. Paradoxically, the fans don’t want any money, they want to GIVE their money through loyalty to their club and mostly because they love football for their own individual escapist reasons. It is an admirable altruist human trait that will never be eliminated though eventually it might well see off professional football if the present system continues. This is not to have any illusions about fans and how they can be fickle, but their general inclination is loyal and altruist or they wouldn’t return time after time. The levels of gates speak for themselves. After all only a few clubs can attain playing glory and they are generally known quite early on in a season. Still the fans turn up, relegation threat or no relegation threat.

Therefore it is time for players and clubs to realize they have short-changed the fans through their single-minded scramble for their own short-term interests. It is time for them to consider how the fans will react long-term if the present system is not altered to suit their more sensible wishes. Most fans I have met really don’t mind what the players earn so long as they can feel a sense of mutuality and that they aren’t being taken for a mug. They also need to feel a reasonable sense of security about team-building. The median must be found or the professional game will die or evolve into something none of us want to see.

Nobody should underestimate the conundrum the players face. It is a short playing life and for most of them there is precious little glory at the end of it except the enjoyment anybody gets out of loving their occupation and doing it well. They have to provide for themselves and their families while they can. After that few of them have the wherewithal to make a living like everybody else. For most of them it is necessary to live off previously inflated earning power. But the higher-earning players better realize that most of them earn more in a week than most fans earn in a year or even two years, and something has to come back to the fans or they will simply stop paying out and stay away. Understandably, fans’ sympathy is in quite short supply. It could expire at any time. Unfortunately it can also lead onto completely the wrong view of what the vast majority of professional players earn.

A classic example of the kind of fix any club and player can get into is the case of Kevin Campbell. When he signed his five-year deal at £28K per week he was at the top of his form for us. Quite rightly all sensible fans saw him as a sports hero whose goals had probably saved us from relegation. They wanted him signed on a long-term contract. Which the club promptly did. Then he got a terrible cruciate ligament injury. The timing couldn’t have been worse for everybody, himself included. He looked like he would never play again. Against all the odds he made a come back but he was never the same player. Some former admirers, fickle fans as ever, turned on him while being egged on by a tiny number of organized BNP racists from north Liverpool. Meanwhile his wages are still payable and – if not met by insurance cover – cost us hugely. Naturally Kevin wants to see out his contract in the full knowledge he could never again command that kind of wage. Who can sensibly blame him? Even in adversity he still gives one hundred percent but his pace and strength have waned badly, probably finally, this season and I am willing to bet nobody is more mortified than he. Even now there are few players with more pride or enthusiasm than he. Through nobody’s fault, least of all his, his legs simply won’t do it anymore. The system has caught everybody in a cleft stick.

Since all human activities tend to fluctuate in their intensity it is only a matter of time before professional football experiences a downturn in popularity. Inevitably this will mean lower gates and less money going through the game. Which means less money available for players’ earnings. Nobody will be immune. When it happens it will play havoc with any long-term business plans prepared by the hapless Suits, the very people who helped most to create present circumstances. Though impossible to forecast precisely the signs are already there and can be read by anyone interested enough to get off their backsides and pay due attention, players included. There are gloomy forecasts of the number of players to be off-loaded throughout the game this close-season. Record numbers of clubs are in or about to go into administration.

If the players want to reduce the game to merely what they can earn then it can be no surprise when the inevitable Suit appears with financial charts which equally reduce the game to one squad “worth” X millions versus another squad “worth” Y millions. At which point you could be forgiven if you asked facetiously, “Why don’t we just have two teams of bank managers or Suits on the park?” How long before the players BECOME the Suits? What then?

That’s the point we’re at in April 2004.

Your move.

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