Increasingly disillusioned with the state of top flight football, This Is Anfield co-editor and Liverpool season ticket holder, Max Munton, bemoans the imbalance of the fan-player relationship.
On 18th January 1961, under pressure from the PFA, the Football League abolished the players’ wage cap on the basis that they were professionals and should be earning more than the factory workers coming to watch them.
“Although this was great for the players, and much deserved,” writes Jim Keoghan, author of the excellent ‘Punk Football: The Rise of Fan Ownership in English Football’ (Pitch Publishing, 2014), “the immediate effect of the abolition was ballooning wage inflation.”
Although this enabled English football to both keep and attract the best talent, attendances dropped in the 1970s and 1980s as other weekend activities became affordable and hooliganism damaged the game’s reputation.
Clubs began to look for non-matchday revenue streams to supplement the rising cost of the previously manageable player wages and running costs, and so the commercialism that many claim plagues the modern game today gathered pace—including Liverpool becoming the first team to secure an FA-authorised shirt sponsorship deal with Hitachi in 1979.
As widely documented, that commercialism has since escalated, and so has the cost of top-flight football, with Paul Tomkins of The Tomkins Times responding to The Guardian’s David Conn in August 2014 taking interest in that “ticket prices have risen by over 1,000% since 1988, given that transfer prices have also risen by over 1,000% in that time… The rise in TV money, and the rise in ticket prices, simply pays for the rise in transfer fees and wages.”
Whether it’s a Sky Sports subscription, or £40 for a “severely restricted view” ticket for Liverpool v Swansea City on a cold Monday night in December, football consumerism is funding the astronomical financial divide between fans and players—with the latter doing very little to give anything back.
According to The Guardian , in May 2014 Liverpool’s wage bill was the fifth highest in the Premier League at £206 million — up £169 million from 2012. It makes up 64% of the club’s overall turnover and whilst the players’ pockets were well and truly lined, the club made a £50 million loss before tax.
A disgusted Karen Gill, granddaughter of Bill Shankly, told Liverpool Confidential in an interview in August 2014, “He’d be appalled by the obscene wages, he’d be absolutely devastated that the simple folk, who are the backbone of the ‘glorious game’ are being priced out of the whole match experience.
“Such was my granddad’s enthusiasm and passion; he would have played football and managed his team for absolutely no money whatsoever.
“That’s how much football meant to him and that is the devotion that is missing today.”
In August 2014, a joint attempt between Liverpool supporters’ union Spirit Of Shankly and their Everton counterparts The Blue Union to convince the two clubs to enter a reciprocal ticket price reduction deal for the forthcoming Anfield and Goodison Merseyside derby games was rejected.
In his response, Liverpool chief executive Ian Ayre made the rejection of the proposal black and white: “Like any business, we set budgets ahead of our year/season and provide for all income and expenditure. As part of this we invest in player transfers and salaries for the season as well as continuing to invest in making improvements to our stadium and other general expenditure you would expect of a large football club.”
Recent reports have suggested 19-year-old Raheem Sterling is set to be offered a £125,000 per week deal to extend his contract at Liverpool, whilst Daniel Sturridge agreed a lucrative new deal in return for his long-term commitment in October.
Responses of “sign him up whatever it takes” and “give him anything he wants” amongst fans on social media are blind to the personal repercussions and expense that will follow.
Likewise, Daniel Agger was showered with praise upon his departure after eight years at Anfield this summer. A “loyal servant” maybe, a “club legend” debatably, but a contributor to the crippling cost of football nonetheless.
This isn’t “against modern football” — a term lazily thrown about without realising the progress in racial and gender equality in the game, particularly in fandom. Furthermore “modern football” encompasses fan ownership success stories such as AFC Wimbledon and FC United of Manchester and organised supporter activism in groups and unions.
There seem few solutions, if any, without collective action en masse or political interference. Reintroducing a player wage cap to curb the problem remains a pipe dream with leagues already competing for the best players and football associations’ objectives rooted in commercial gain all but flattening fan-focussed initiatives.
Despite many players’ roots being in working class communities, it would be naïve to expect the game’s “heroes” to give back a portion of their salaries to supplement the expense of the devotees that watch them every week. After all, would you say no if someone offered you more money to do your job? The agents and club officials are to blame too—but there’s yet to be a song sung for Ayre and co.
We go to the game on a Saturday (or Sunday, or Monday…), the passionate songs come out and the handmade banners and flags are flown in a sea of red and white, but this outpouring of undivided and enduring love is very much a one-way street.
The club’s attempts to conceal this imbalance in the fan-player relationship is through positive PR and spin. Recent years has seen classics such as ‘Luis Suarez gets interviewed by a 10-year-old fan’, ‘Jose Enrique smashes TV when trying to win prize for Kopite in #PaddyPower promotion’ and a personal favourite, ‘Jonjo Shelvey bakes a cake for Comic Relief’.
At the end of Liverpool’s 2-1 much needed victory over West Brom at Anfield last month, as the rest of the team trudged down the tunnel towards an international break, Jordan Henderson and Simon Mignolet completed their post-match handshakes and took two or three steps over the halfway line towards the Kop, briefly applauding the day’s support. Thanks lads; £50 ticket, travel expenses, the songs, the chants, the cheers, and we get a little shuffle of appreciation. Superficial gesture or not, at least you tried.
Almost simultaneously, 600 miles away at Borussia Dortmund’s Westfalenstadion, Jürgen Klopp’s side joined hands in solidarity, walked towards the “yellow wall” of the Südtribüne and showed complete gratitude to fans who paid less than €20 for their ticket. Dortmund had just lost 1-0 to relegation candidates Hamburg.
This article was first published in the October 2014 edition of the We Are Liverpool fanzine.
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petikan dari Liverpool FC, This is Anfield, Teamtalk
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