Well done Messi! But Isn’t Money in Football Rotting the Roots of the Game?

In the news this week were two tales about footballers who answer to the name of Messi that tell the story of the yawning gap between the rich and the poor in the game. 

Lionel Messi – probably the finest footballer on the planet – signed a contract with Inter Miami CF in the United States that will earn him more than $129 million over the next two years or so. 

In the same week, thousands of miles away, on the other side of the Atlantic, a man once dubbed the “non-league Messi” also started a new life with a club on the lean side of football’s cruel wealth divide. 

Jason Cowley: Football’s Non-League Triumph

Jason Cowley, a striker as hard-working small and nimble as Messi, left Stourbridge to sign for Hereford for an “undisclosed fee” that’s not likely to be much. He acquired his nickname from Sports AM for a spectacular goal for Bromsgrove Sporting when he waltzed around an entire team to score.  

Next month, Messi will run out before tens of thousands, shadowed by scores of medical staff on a pitch you could play bowls on, in a state-of-the-art stadium. He will earn more in one minute than Cowley – on probably about £3000 a month – could earn in several lifetimes of playing.

In August, Cowley will run out before a few thousand faithful in a ramshackle stadium that hasn’t changed too much since the 1960s. It may be the grassroots of the game, but all over the world, the shortage of money in the basement of the football world means these roots are rotting. 

Does Money in Football Make An Unfair Playing Field?

What concerns me – and should everyone who cares about the game – is that all the talent and money are being sucked to the top of the game. Often this money is squandered by bloated staff rosters, extravagant marketing, and embarrassments of riches in the shape of hundreds of millions of pounds worth of players sitting on the bench. 

How long before there are merely a handful of top clubs sharing a small pool of multi-billionaire players who ply their trade before full houses of corporate box dwellers with more interest in Chardonnay than a smart cut inside the left back? A world where most fans are priced out of the game as sponsorship is sucked ever upwards?

In that world, more and more small, grassroots clubs – many of whom nurtured international stars: Chris Waddle played for Tow Law Town; Arsenal’s Alan Smith for Alvechurch – will diminish and die. And so will the soul of the game. 

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