If one of my grandchildren emulated Jessica Ennis I would be proud. If one of my grandchildren considered Wayne Rooney a hero I would be ashamed. But then this whole thread is about the values you hold as important. If you value the shallow, the common, the cheap, the vulgar then you would argue that all is well in the world of football.
Godders is like that old guy in the room that always makes inappropriate, backward and ill-educated statements. Everyone in the room will chuckle, some will say "Oh, Grandad!", but there'll be a few that cannae wait for him to feck off and die.
And then there are the downright stupid who make crass comments like yours without old age or a poor education as an excuse.
Everyone would prefer Jessica Ennis as a relation to Wayne Rooney, but would you be so proud to have Dwayne Chambers as a grandchild though,or would you prefer Joe Hart? Olympians are more likely to be better educted than footballers, as they often go to Private schools and universities for their training,and i should think there is a fair chance their parents are likely to be better off than footballers parents,due to football being a "working class sport" that you dont need any special equipment to play. It doesnt neccessarily make them better people though. The Olympics is great though isnt it,watched the cycling and athletics today,and never gave a second thought to the GB football team.
Godders, I normally enjoy reading what you have to say, but I think this is total drivel. There are intelligent footballers and there are stupid athletes. Not that it matters, because it has very little to do with how well they play their sport. Wayne Rooney may not be very bright, but that's no reflection on his value as a person, and most importantly he's doing something he's good at. Some of your comments on this thread are horrifically elitist. You don't know these people, and you don't know whether they're decent people off the pitch. For all you know, Rooney could be a really nice guy in person. As for the team's efforts in the Olympics, it just doesn't matter that much to them. This is as big as it gets for most sports, but not for football. Also the team is just not that good. As for the spitting, if you really did play football until you were 40, you should surely know that it's perfectly understandable. All athletes do it, and also musicians spit constantly when playing live gigs. You tend to salivate an awful lot while doing those sorts of things. Besides, it not like they're spitting at anyone. As for the tattoos and hair, who seriously gives a ****? It's personal taste. I often think they look stupid as well, but I really am not fussed. You shouldn't waste your time getting so pissed off about the little things. There are plenty of way worse things you could be getting pissed off about. If you really need something to rant about, and it sure seems like you do, have a look what's happening in Syria. That's far more disastrous that a tasteless tattoo.
Forget about tattoos, haircuts and education. For me there are two much bigger problems: 1. The ridiculously massive wages that footballers earn and 2. (which is a consequence of the first problem) Loyalty. ...I love football but the catastrophic wages that footballers earn disgusts me and the little loyalty that players show in this day and age is equally pathetic.
1. That's basic supply and demand. All private sector salaries work the exact same way. 2. Why show loyalty to a club that you don't necessarily support? Money is not the only reason players move. They are ambitious.
Just because a team has the money to pay footballers £200,000 a week it doesn´t they have to. There should be a limit. It would mean football would be much more competitive and teams, like Pompey, wouldn´t find themselves in the situation they are in now. I didn´t say money is the ONLY reason players move. There are many other reasons. However, if many players were swayed less by money then I´m sure that there would be a lot less transfer activity.
The main problem with having a salary cap is that they'll just make up for it in massive signing-on fees and appearance fees instead. You might as well just let the free market work naturally. I really don't understand why people get so wound up by this, it's just how capitalism works. Besides, how much a footballer earns has no effect on your life, and if anything the circulation of huge amounts of money in football is good for the country's economy. It may seem like a crazy amount for them to be earning, but it just doesn't matter. Let it happen.
Behaviour, education etc. aside for a moment, when was the last time you saw a footballer show the level of passion and pride for England that our Olympians have shown for Team GB? In recent times, only David Beckham has really shown commitment to playing for his country. Most players place their clubs first and don't display the patriotism and desire that we think we would in their place. As someone up the thread said, it's an English/Big club problem more than one that affects other home nations or 'smaller' clubs.
Loyalty works both ways in football. Fans hate the fact that a player or manager will leave to a bigger club for more money but often don't hesitate to call for a managers head and barely shed a tear when a club releases a player.
Forgetting all the social points raised, I did sit with my wife last night and suggest (reluctantly, having spend years disagreeing) that these games have been bigger than the World Cup. I have been impressed with everything and enjoyed them immensely. I have loved the way that the crowds have embraced the event and how the British athletes have reacted to the crowds. Yesterday was a very special day that I felt as if I was taking part in something special along with my wife and children. I didn't expect to feel as good about the games as I do now.
May be, just may be The Olympics equate to a great feel good movie and Football to a successful TV soap. If you develop the analogy The Olympics reflect the ideal and Football the day to day drama. The characters fit the format, Rooney will be in close up on your TV screens maybe 70 times a year and Wiggins will be wheeled out (pun intended) for his Knighthood and Sports Personality of the year, with a script and perhaps an appropriate one off display of emotion. We can all see Rooney's frailties, if he wanted to he couldn't hide them. Football for me is much more than the sum of it's parts. Besides the emotional attachment to my roots it provides the catalyst to meet up with life long Southampton born friends who are spread around the country. Do I think that Footballers are 'lesser sportsmen' than Olympians, not at all. I do wish that those that run football could find a way to ensure that blatant cheating was taken out the game, but there again perhaps the problem is more with Blatter than Rooney. And the Test Match might be very interesting today.
To all of you who have crticised my original comments in this thread I have only one thing to say and that is if you think football has nothing to learn from what we have witnessed over the last week or so in the Olympics then you are part of the reason why football will never raise itself fom the greed and total lack of sportsmanship it has allowed to become the accepted norm.
Godders you're being overly sensitive. I know I'm biaised buut these Games have been magnificent with more to come but as others have siad it's once ebvery four years, or a lifetime in your own country. Football is every week. You can't compare.
I think the biggest difference between olympians and footballers can be seen in losing. Footballers all say they hate losing, but eventually that feeling disappears. I wonder at what point a footballer stops being disappointed about losing. Is in the changing room when he puts on his rolex, £400 jeans and £2000 headphones? Is it when he gets into his Lamborghini/Aston/Porsche/Ferrari? Is it when he goes home to his mansion and bangs his supermodel/glamour model/pop star wag? Is it when he logs in to his computer and checks that he still has enough money in his bank account to bail out a small African country? And either way, he has another chance to make up for the loss next week, or at worst next year. Most olympians do not have this. IMO it's also not just football as well, but Rugby is going that way with professionalism as well. You could also say that one of the things that motivates Olympians is the strong desire to not let themselves (and by extension, their friends, family and even coaches) down. In an individual sport there is no hiding place. In olympic sports where there is a team, it possibly even hightens the desire to give your all. In the Olympics, you care about your team, you are together for years on end, you do not want to let them down and you respect them. A professional football team is a group of mercenaries, who generally know that they will not be playing with the same people for more than 2 or 3 years, and anybody could leave next week. They don't necessarily care about their teammates, they don't necessarily respect them. Plus, to go back to the original point, a footballer playing badly can always hide in the team. A bad performance might not even cost their team defeat. If they do lose, subconsciously they can always still pin the blame on their teammates, or say that they would have lost anyway no matter what their own level of performance was. They haven't let themselves down, they are not under the same spotlight as an individual sportsman (which is probably why footballers hate penalties so much). I'm not going to get involved in Godders observations about class, apart from saying that social class isn't the sole determinant of attitude. Look at the England Rugby team for instance. Generally all very well bought up, middle class boys, educated expensively, not a chav in sight. And yet their level of performance was just as bad in the 2011 world cup as the English football team's was in the 2010 world cup. And then Wales, where the players are solidly working class, the sons of miners, steelworkers and farmers, sporting silly haircuts, tattoos, fake tan and pierced ears aplenty. Yet they played with an incredible passion and were model professionals off the field.
