FOOTBALLERS: THEN AND NOW

THEN

The typical English footballer of the 1950s was born and raised in a tough coal-mining area. He turned to the sport only after failing to get accepted for a job down the pit which provided better pay and working conditions than football.

He addressed the manager of his club as ‘sir’, and even that only when he was spoken to first. He cleaned his own boots, which weighed approximately a third of a stone each. His wages were £15 a week (£12 in the summer) – the maximum wage of £20 a week was not abolished by the Football Association until 1961.

The typical footballer smoked 30 cigarettes a day, drank eight pints of bitter a night, and his average evening meal contained only slightly less grease than the engine of his second-hand Morris Minor. His team’s matches were always on a Saturday afternoon or a Wednesday night (and even that only became common after floodlights were introduced). He shared a bath with 10 other players, and washed his hair with carbolic soap.

After his retirement from the game he ran a pub, or – if he had been particularly successful – two pubs.

NOW

The typical footballer of today is signed by his first club at the age of 14, upon which his assistant agent (contracts) negotiates his first endorsement deal with a leisurewear manufacturer. He then progresses through the youth and reserve teams, making his Premier League debut two weeks before he takes delivery of his first Ferrari, and four weeks before he can legally start learning to drive his first Ferrari.

Having turned in a series of adequate performances, he is billed by his agent as ‘the next Rooney’, which leads several other clubs to bid increasingly obscene amounts for his signature. He is eventually transferred for an eight-figure sum to a club who pay him more in a week than his parents earn together in a year.

His games are sometimes on a Saturday afternoon, but often on almost any other day of the week, depending on whether Sky have switched the match to Sunday afternoon or Monday evening to suit their TV schedule, or how long the other team have been allowed to recover from their quarter-final, second-leg Europa League tie the previous Thursday in the Ukraine.

His girlfriend is a pop star, or a model, or a pop star who used to be a model. She is blonde.

He cannot understand why you would want to go abroad, unless it’s to get a suntan. This attitude was best illustrated by the West Bromwich Albion player John Trewick who, on a tour of China, was offered the chance to see the Great Wall. He declined, saying that ‘Once you’ve seen one wall, you’ve seen them all.’

After today’s typical footballer retires from the game, he will play golf.