Where is the outrage?

A couple of days ago after having read some of the latest sports papers, I asked myself the question of the worth of a football player.

A question that certainly crossed some borders. On one hand, because a whole lot of “experts” tried to answer it, and on the other hand because Gareth Bale is the subject of discussion.

Gareth Bale who is the personified transgression of borders of the human rational.

Bale. A seemingly endless Transfer-Saga, which has pretty much all the elements that one could describe as despicable in the professional football scene.

Where is the proportionality? Where is the end of the line?

Who will show decency and will bridle the mammon?

Where is the outrage?

After all there has been a huge outrage about the Manager wage and their bonuses. Yes one could even speak about the public anger these topics have brought up.

However, the madness in football doesn’t seem to be socially applicable.

Like the financial markets, the transfer market has already started to disconnect from the real world market economy. All across Europe, the sword of Damocles is hanging over the broke economies. With hefty financial cuts especially in the social areas of public spending, they are trying to reanimate the patient while he is collapsing.

In between all this misery, between Dublin and Athens, football is sitting in the ivory tower, untouched by the shakeup of the financial crisis. Spain seems to have no usage of the future building bricks that the unwilling desertion of highly qualified students resembles an exodus.

Tolerated Madness

On the other hand, young men with high wages are wooed into the country. Men whose only talent is to kick a ball with their foot. Thereby, Lionel Messi was probably calm and happy that at the birth of his son Thiago he had an under-paid midwife with her invaluable knowledge there instead of his financial consultant.

It seems ludicrous that we in Germany debate about the social justice and how after we “saved” the banking system we now can save the democratic commonwealth. No one seems to be bothered that in football disproportional sums are paid to finance footballers.

It is not so much about the fact that is happens. It is more about the perverse naturalness with how this happens. And that’s where we get back to Gareth Bale. With the exception of some rules the world is full of invaluable human lives – at the moment around 7,2 Billion. Gareth Bale with his talent is one of them. This does not make him more valuable though.

Fans and Media should therefore have a change of mind and they really should complain loudly about the insane Transfer fees instead of creating the godlike imagine of people.

Many people are speculating about the real worth of the Welshman. 130 million? 100 million? 75 million? Or really just 30 million? In my opinion, no club should pay more than 50 million for a player.

Will financial fair play really tame this monster? We will have to wait and see. That the tool will actually come into effect in 2015 can be seen as a step into the right direction.

“Less personal wealth rather than the concentration of financial power of disposal and mass psychological influence in relatively few hands is becoming a serious threat to an open society”, reminds Helmut Schmidt.

Since football is a skewed reflection of our society, this reminder echoes after the Financial Fairplay in a way. 

For just as in society, the excesses of individual well-torpedo all, they eliminate just in football every little remnant of virtue.

Shouldn’t we have an outrage over that for once?