The transfer window shut on September 1 and with it came all of the usual brouhaha surrounding players’ futures, how much money they’re costing and where they may or may not be going.
In some cases, it might have been the end of a good old-fashioned transfer saga, the obvious one there being that of Alexander Isak’s move to Liverpool from Newcastle, whilst there were also a few surprise moves here and there as clubs clamoured for reinforcements and panic buys.
The Isak move has, of course, generated plenty of chat over the summer about what it is fair to expect from a footballer under contract to a club, let alone one who is so highly revered by the fans of said club and who has propelled himself to hero status.
How quickly that can change. Isak is probably now public enemy number one on Tyneside such was his desire to move on and the way he handled the situation by effectively going on strike until he got what he wanted.
He’s not the first and won’t be the last to go from hero to zero once the head gets turned but the reality of it is that, no matter how fans dress it up, for these players it’s rarely about loyalty and more about the pay cheque and career opportunities.
It’s pretty rare at the top level now to see too many players stay at a club to rack up 500 appearances, let alone do it with their ‘boyhood’ or local club, as used to be the case back in the day when the financial aspect wasn’t as much of a consideration.
And when you strip football back to the basics of people being employed to do a job, why should it be about anything else other than career, stability and finances just like it is for your average person on the street?
I know personally a player who played for arch rival clubs during his career, even moving between the two on one occasion, and when I asked him for which team he preferred playing he merely responded, “It was just a job.”
If someone isn’t happy in their job or wants to better themselves, they largely have the freedom to do just that whenever they choose. In football, it’s that bit more complicated given the nature of contracts, the sheer sums of money involved and the restrictions as to when moves are even allowed to happen thanks to the transfer windows.
But the bottom line is, someone like Isak purely had the opportunity to move from one big club to another much more successful one who also happen to be the current Premier League champions, and as hard as it is for Newcastle fans to accept, that’s the long and short of it. although that’s not to excuse his refusal to play for those paying his wages.
Of course when you make yourself a hero it makes it harder for fans to let you go, irrespective of the reasons, and it hurts a lot more when it’s to a rival club rather than a retirement home in the MLS, for example.
As a young-ish Tottenham fan, I was more than a little dismayed when a certain Sol Campbell moved down the road to our local rivals all those years ago. In basic terms, it was a player wanting to move somewhere they felt they’d get more success and fulfilment than where they were and he was ultimately proved right (I say through gritted teeth...) but football fans always get caught up in a fog of anger rather than going down the rational route when these things occur.
Footballers aren’t like fans, not in 99 per cent of cases anyway. They don’t usually have the same lifelong, ‘in the blood’ attachment to a club and so, irrespective of how well they might do there, it’s easier to walk away, although there are of course exceptions to that for players who might spend a large number of years becoming part of the furniture, or if they are a lifelong fan.
Would someone like Dan Burn, a true Geordie and fan of the club he now excels for, have acted in a similar way to Isak? Probably not – exceptions here potentially being if you’re at a lower level and the chance to play higher comes calling, although refusing to play and train probably wouldn’t come into it in those circumstances.
It’s an accepted part of football that unless you are the best in the land, you often become victims of your own success when players develop and are snapped up by bigger clubs, and even with Newcastle having won the League Cup and also qualified for the Champions League, the reality is that Liverpool would currently, and respectfully, be a bigger pull than Newcastle United to any player whose career is flying like that of Isak’s at the moment.
Player power is being perceived as a negative thing in a lot of discussions and clearly when contracts are involved, they’re there to be honoured for numerous reasons, but where those contracts are so handsomely compensated it’s probably a lot easier for players to force hands rather than risk breaching the terms with which they’re bound to a club.
So with the word ‘loyalty’ being banded about so much in the last few weeks, the reality is that it’s rarely about that any more and nor should it really be expected.
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