Comments on: Loyalty in football is over-rated

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 23:56:49 +0000

Great article Neil. And one everyone can relate to.

By: billy

billy — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 14:00:53 +0000

football is over rated, but frank lampard is fit

By: AhmedShah

AhmedShah — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 06:17:23 +0000

Brilliant article ! Absolutely fantastic ! Brilliantly written ! It should be remembered that being a professional footballer is still a job for those players and it should be compared to normal day-to-day jobs.

By: Tom Chow

Tom Chow — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 09:13:27 +0000

Yes you are right in some sense, I suppose every football fanatic associate themselves as a part of a “family” together with the football club, managers and football players. They felt betrayed when one of their “family member” left them to join another rival family. It feels like your brother changing his last name.

On the other hand, its a dream to play for your favourite football club and country therefore the fans envied Barry could play and captained for Villa (the best club in the world to Villa’s fans) and yet turn his back on them.

I appreciated Barry’s bravey for joining Man City, its really easy to join Liverpool and have a better chance of winning something but it seems to me that he chosed a more challenging path or a more rewarding ($$$) path, who knows?

By: Daniel Chung

Daniel Chung — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 13:46:41 +0000

Enjoyed reading this piece.

Football is both a profession whereby players earn a living (rather nice one at that) as well as an adversarial contest that cultivates a collective spirit against another. So when you try to dichotomize the two (as players often do to justify or rationalize their move from one club to another), the result is a failure by the fans to appreciate the fact that football can be seen as a means to earn a living. When Benito Mussolini splintered off from the Italian Socialist Party to form the Fascist movement in Italy he stated to his old comrades “you hate me with immense hatred because you once loved me.” There is an emotional aspect of football that makes it different from other professions. For example, I work as a prosecutor but should the day ever come that I decide to work as a defense attorney, not even people in my job would think of it as a betrayal. But that’s because there’s a huge difference between my profession and football (other than the pay): the fans.

By: bobby shehu

bobby shehu — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 09:41:25 +0000

Brilliant article, objective to say the least.loved the last sentence:)

By: Villan

Villan — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 22:46:40 +0000

Poor footballers! You’ve got to feel sorry for them, haven’t you? They’re just like everyone else really, aren’t they? The fact they earn more than the national average yearly wage every couple of days and only do a few hours a week for it is no reason to hold them to different standard than everyone else, is it? In fact I might start a pressure group or maybe even a charity to help poor misunderstood young fellas like Gareth Barry, Ashley Cole and Jermain Defoe. These lads are the salts of the earth, don’t ya know!!!

By: Andrei

Andrei — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 21:47:33 +0000

Hugo, would that be such a bad thing? I mean, do you see any benefit to The Sun’s continued and pathetic existance?* I think that some tabloids are unworthy of being distributed to the masses.

*Yes, Ahmed, I have heard of the Page 3 Girls…

By: bobmagee

bobmagee — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 13:38:50 +0000

“regaled by tales of the skills of Robinho” ha

By: Hugo

Hugo — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 11:12:08 +0000

nice article mate, unfortunately, we football fans are by definition a little insane and a lot unreasonable. I agree with you, but if we didn’t express moral outrage at players making rational, reasonable decisions, we’d put a good few publications out of business