Ambition or avarice

On the same day that the Government was announcing the loss of up to half-a-million public-sector jobs, a footballer earning £90,000-a-week was outlining why he intends to renege on his contract and join alternative employers likely to offer around £1m-amonth.

For all that Wayne Rooney can claim he is motivated by ambition rather than avarice, his actions hardly portray football in a positive light.

Loyalty became an outdated concept in football years ago, and if owners can leverage debt in order to profit from clubs they can barely afford, why should players not be free to chase whatever riches are made available to them?

In most other walks of life, the prospect of a 100 per cent pay increase would not lead to a prolonged bout of soul-searching. A letter of resignation would be submitted as soon as the ink was dry.

But football is surely different, and Rooney’s case is even more peculiar still.

Ultimately, football clubs exist as financially-viable institutions because of the income generated from their supporters, whether that is somebody local buying their season ticket or a fan from the opposite side of the world investing in a replica strip.

Supporters need a reason to believe, and for every mercenary act such as the one played out by Rooney this week, the stench of cynicism and emotional dislocation increases.

It increasingly feels as though the footballing juggernaut, which has generated wealth beyond most people’s comprehension in recent years, is slowing. If more and more fans become disillusioned with the naked greed and commercialism of the Premier League, perhaps one day it will finally grind to a halt.

Other players have made similar attempts to change employers of course, and clubs have not been averse to engineering unpalatable deals of their own in the past.

But Rooney is such a high-profile, highmaintenance figure, and his actions have been so objectionable, that this feels like a particularly bitter betrayal. When you find yourself feeling sympathy for Sir Alex Ferguson, you know a significant line has been crossed.

As Ferguson was right to point out in Tuesday’s press conference – a stunningly effective example of how to win a PR war – Manchester United have stood by Rooney through a host of on-field and off-field troubles.

He has repaid them with a string of match-winning displays, but how many employers outside football would have displayed similar support to a member of staff, no matter how valued, who had been linked with a succession of allegations involving prostitutes?

How many clubs would have nurtured a headstrong young professional so caringly and sensitively in an attempt to prevent their lifestyle escalating out of control?

And how many managers would have shown the kind of paternal interest that Ferguson has displayed in Rooney ever since he walked through the Old Trafford entrance as a wideeyed 17-year-old?

Their reward? This week’s statement questioning Manchester United’s ambition and making an undisguised overture to their rivals down the road at the City of Manchester Stadium.

Cleverly, Rooney’s advisor, Paul Stretford, opted to take on the unpopular Glazer family rather than the cherished and respected Sir Alex, but his policy was more transparent than glass.

Since when did Rooney become an expert in player recruitment? Ferguson has become something of an apologist for the Glazer regime, but I would still trust his judgement ahead of that of a troubled striker.

And even if Rooney feels Manchester United are slipping behind Chelsea and Manchester City in English football’s pecking order, isn’t it his duty as a club employee to help do something about it? Instead, he has made it all but impossible to select him between now and January 1.

Compare and contrast with the situation at Liverpool, where Jamie Carragher and Steven Gerrard, no matter how disillusioned, have displayed impeccable professionalism in terms of their dealings with their club.

According to Rooney’s statement, “It’s all about winning trophies”. Well for all of City’s new-found financial clout, I don’t see too many of those at Eastlands.

What I do see, though, is an incredible array of Middle Eastern wealth. The type of wealth, for example, that might double the salary of a highly-paid footballer looking for more cash.

To provide a bit of context, the Government has been forced to scrap a £160m fund that drives the national PE and schools sport strategy and finances 450 school sport partnerships, providing links between schools and professional clubs.

If Rooney moves to Manchester City on £200,000-a-week, he will earn a third of that over the course of a five-year deal.

LISTENING to the comments of Middlesbrough supporters reacting to Gordon Strachan’s departure this week, I was struck by how many were referring to the club’s current position as an “anomaly” or a “blip”.

Perhaps it is. But if you rank all 92 league clubs in terms of their average attendance this season, Boro come in 33rd.

Doesn’t that suggest that the last decade-and-a-half, in which the Teessiders have spent 13 years in the Premier League, appeared in a European final and won the Carling Cup, is the aberration, not the club’s current spell in the Championship?

AFTER Middlesbrough’s troubles in Rome during the club’s UEFA Cup campaign, it was alarming to hear of two Liverpool supporters being stabbed in Naples ahead of last night’s European game with Napoli.

Hooliganism within Italian football is every bit as rife as it was in this country in the mid-to-late 1980s. But while UEFA banned English club sides from Europe, their silence on the situation in Italy has been deafening.

It is time for European football’s governing body to take a stance. Either Italy cleans up its act, or its club sides are kicked out of the Champions League and its national side is banned from Euro 2012.

Sadly, given the power of the Italian lobby within UEFA, I will not be holding my breath.