Footballers are the Only Fairly Paid People in the Country

Why are you angry about their wages, but not your own?

One of my “favourite” (if that’s the word) online arguments you see cropping up now and then on places like Facebook is phrased along the lines of “Should soldiers be paid more than footballers?” The ‘debate’ is interesting because it falls at the intersection of nationalism, class and an understanding of economics. The poll itself is nearly always very heavily skewed in favour of the soldiers, not least because it often originates from pro-army groups.

I don’t think it makes sense to get drawn on the details here, needless to say the whole argument is just performative nonsense for people who like to moan about how much footballers earn or how much they love the army. The realities of the situation are that in a wage based economy, workers are paid a fraction of the value of their labour. Now that fraction can be relatively high, I’m not using the term in the sense of “tiny portion of” (although for most wage labourers that’d probably the case). Workers who generate more value, because their skills are in shorter supply, such as footballers, get a higher fraction, see how it works? If you don’t like this system then perhaps you have more affinity with the ideals of leftism than you previously thought. It’s actually not just about having female characters in video games and black people cast in fictional roles in historical TV shows, would you believe?

Unlike most sneering, elitist, thought-policing leftists stopping you from being racist, I actually really like football. And, as a history nerd, I also enjoy learning about the evolution of the game through time, both from a tactical and sporting perspective (thank you Tifo football for your 26th video on the W-M) and on the wider level of how football has interacted with wider culture and what role it plays within it. The story of workers’ (hereafter players’) rights in football is central to the evolution of the sport. Back in the day, when football was just starting to be formalised, ‘competitive’ sport was an upper class hobby. Working class people engaged in sports and games, but they didn’t have the bells and whistles of a formalised rule set, an organised competition structure and, crucially officials and record keepers to enforce those rules and competition structures. Moreover, there simply wasn’t space to have a ‘proper’ game of football – here’s a map of Manchester from 1845 – tell me where you’d have a kick-about if you were a mill worker living in the city centre.

I won’t go into the full details here, because (sadly) this article isn’t supposed to be about the history of football, but suffice to say that things moved on and working class people increasingly were able to engage with the game. The debate over professionalization will have parallels to those familiar with the rugby league/rugby union split, as working class players sought compensation for their time and effort playing, which could result in injuries preventing them from working their regular jobs (almost always in manual trades or in factories) and thus cost them their livelihoods. There wasn’t statutory sick pay in the 1880s, because the nascent trade union movement had not yet built up enough to demand it nationally. To cut a long story short, by the end of 19th century, football had transformed into a working class game.

Even as late as the 1970s (not an article about the history of football – promise) most footballers were paid only 2-3 times the national average wage, and the vast majority needed to work “ordinary” jobs after their playing career ended. The best you could say was that you’d get free pints in the local pub from older fans who remembered you playing for their team. Club owners fought tooth and nail to keep anti-worker policies in place, most notoriously, the maximum wage, which capped player earning at £20 a week. It was only the collective effort of the players’ union, the PFA, that put a stop to the practice by threatening to strike.

Now I’m not asking anyone to feel sorry for someone earning upwards of £100,000 per week, but even today players’ rights exist in a bit of a hazy space. The contracts that most modern elite footballers sign are nothing like that which we sign in virtually any other profession. They are time bounded and players cannot break them unilaterally (except when they can – but that’s very rare). What’s more is that clubs have a series of unofficial rules of engagement to protect their own “assets” (remember that top players now routinely sell for £30m+, in some cases, almost 10 times that) which prevents players from just upping and leaving if they don’t feel like being there. Again, not asking you to feel sorry for them, just pointing out that the millions they make comes with many terms and conditions. Every luxury modern players enjoy wasn’t “handed” to them - it was fought for by the collective action of previous generations of players who wanted to make sure that they were fairly compensated for their time and they received a fair chunk of the profits that club owners were making from the game.

Let’s wind it back to the Facebook debate at the start. Why is it always “footballers” and never “CEOs”, “Middle managers", or “Business owners”? All of these professions earn vastly more than Privates and NCOs in the army, but that’s somehow accepted or at least not outwardly questioned. Is it because those professions are typically occupied by middle class people who are seen to “deserve” wealth, while most professional footballers are from poor backgrounds and therefore their wealth is seen as “unearned?” It’s ironic because being a professional footballer requires not only lots of raw talent but also practice, hard work, dedication to personal fitness, sacrificing the trappings of many teenage and early 20s years to focus solely on playing a sport really really well. In that sense maybe the army comparison makes sense. Certainly most executives never have to make such sacrifices. Elite footballers earn a lot, yes, but that’s in proportion to the money In the sport anyway. It wasn’t players who asked Russian oligarchs to invest in football teams. It wasn’t players who asked oil rich states in the gulf to spend billions on a football team in an attempt to diversify their assets and “detoxify” their brand. It wasn’t players who pushed for the relentless marketisation and commercialisation of football to become yet another facet of the culture industry of 21st century Western society. They’re just taking their fair cut of the huge amount of money that’s now in the game, and why shouldn’t they? Ask yourself in what other industry you’d see it as a “problem” if the workers who create the value of that industry got to keep the majority of its profits. The alternative is that money going to the already ultra-wealthy club owners – personally I’d rather a hard working, working class lad from old Trafford like Marcus Rashford get a share – after all, he’s the one who’s good at football, not Malcom Glazer.

To wrap up, I must confess I wasn’t entirely honest in the headline. The truth is that footballers aren’t fairly paid either, because no one who is waged is. Despite their millions, their big houses and their flashy cars, the owners still make a profit off each pound they pay to them, because if they didn’t, they wouldn’t be able to offer them that wage. Point is though that footballers are much more fairly compensated, proportionally speaking, than the vast majority of wage labourers (yes – including soldiers) in the country. Next time you take the side of a whining football executive talking about how “agents are killing the game” or “player wages are too high” remember that you’re taking the side of someone who sounds like the comically evil spokesperson for AA shareholders whinging that the people who actually make the company a profit are going to get paid rather than a bunch of rich people who did fuck all except invest their capital into it.

Instead of complaining about their wages, why not take a look at your own? Footballers have even done you the favour of showing you how to do it. A union with near universal membership. Using what financial leverage you have to hire agents to represent your interests and negotiate effectively with your employer. Threatening to walk out en-masse in solidarity with others to prevent injustices, and understanding the value of your industry and how much you should earn relative to it. Clearly not everyone can earn £100,000 per week, but you can ask what your wage should be, and you’ll likely find it’s a lot more than you’re earning right now. Don’t waste your time getting angry about footballers’ wages, get angry about yours.