In Praise of Celebrity Football

Is there too much money in European football? Its critics say some of the top teams are spending such enormous sums that no one else could even hope to compete. A quick look at the headlines shows they may have a point. Over the last decade, billionaires like Roman Abramovich of Russia, the American Malcolm Glazer and Abu Dhabi's Sheik Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahayan have spent fortunes buying English football clubs. Player salaries have increased dramatically, and footballers like David Beckham and Wayne Rooney now rank among Britain's wealthiest people. But the allegations about the relationship between football and money have given rise to a number of myths about the way football is played—and what it is likely to look like in the years to come.

MYTH 1: Today's players care more about money than they care about the game. That may be true for a very small percentage of players, maybe 10 percent. But those afflicted by this problem are usually the midlevel players, not the best ones. The top players, and I was among them, are already financially secure. The Sunday Times Rich List estimates that their net worth can be as high as £125 million for a player like Beckham. Manchester United's Rooney has £35 million. Having more money will not change their lives, and they know that if they were to think about money they would quickly disappear from the game. Instead, these athletes have one goal in mind: winning and attaining the kind of respect one gets from delivering. At a certain level, the money is an afterthought.

MYTH 2: There is too much celebrity in the game. A quick scan of the papers at a newsstand in any European city shows just how important the top players are to the media, with their exploits on and off the field chronicled on a daily basis. In fact, some of the stars seem to have become bywords for overpaid loutish extravagance. But the savviest players have themselves learned to exploit the media. Beckham and Rooney are perhaps the most successful, and as long as they are careful, with the help of agents and advisers, not to devolve into ugly behavior, the media exposure brings them more sponsorships and ultimately more money. The fact that people keep buying newspapers, attend matches and watch them on television proves that celebrity culture has not affected the game's quality or people's affection for it.

MYTH 3: The financial crisis will hurt the sport. The bottom line is that English football is not hurting. All the stadiums are full. Sponsors are ready to spend a lot of money, and for every firm that needs to bail out, a new one will come in. Insurance giant AIG just left Manchester United, but the club will get another one to pay much more than AIG was offering because the size of the market continues to grow. Football is growing quickly in China, for instance, and the company that puts its logo on the Manchester United jersey will see an enormous return on the investment.

MYTH 4: Only a handful of teams have enough money to compete and the same teams therefore win year after year. This is simply not true. Chelsea is now one of the top teams, but when I started playing there in 1998, I was among the players who helped build the foundation for what it is today. While money certainly helps, shrewd management helps build teams over time. In England, Tottenham and maybe Manchester City can be contenders in the next year or so if they spend their money in the right way. Italy's Lazio and Spain's Atlético Madrid can potentially compete with the top clubs a year from now if they don't sell their players. The only exception to this may be the smaller French teams. They struggle to keep the best players because the taxes on salaries are so high there that athletes want to play elsewhere so they can keep more of their income.

MYTH 5: The game has lost its neighborhood feel. When I started playing in the 1980s, the game was on a much smaller scale. The interest was on a national, not an international, level. Most young boys could never dream of going to big clubs like Barcelona or Manchester United, and the media was nowhere near as demanding. Back then, people identified themselves with the club, which in turn tended to try to ensure that players would stay at least three or four years before moving on. That's changed over the last 15 years. Coaches and players now move around with dazzling speed, and ticket prices have increased many times over. But supporters have adapted to these changes. They now associate themselves even more with the club, rather than with the individual players. Instead of attending the games, they head to the local pub and watch it on television. After all, that's the balance that European football has achieved: making itself a truly global sport while at the same time maintaining its relationship with the many millions of people who have been following their favorite club for generations.