Tom Humphries and 50m EUR footballers

Earlier this season Fernando Torres was sold from Liverpool to Chelsea for (a reported) 50 million EUR. Two seasons ago Cristiano Ronaldo moved from Manchester United to Real Madrid for 90 million EUR. Rumours of clubs splashing out 30 million EUR+ for a teenager are commonplace. Even though the financial crisis has obliterated my understanding of monetary value I can still grasp the fact that these are ludicrous figures.

I read something yesterday (via the Mirror) which made me a little sick:

Futebol Finance's highest paid players in world football in 2010
1 Cristiano Ronaldo (Real Madrid, £11.3million)
2 Zlatan Ibrahimovic (Barcelona, £10.4million)
3 Lionel Messi (Barcelona, £9.1million)
4 Samuel Eto'o (Internazionale, £9.1million)
5 Kaka (Real Madrid, £8.7million)

I suppose (at the end of the day) (as I say) football - like everything - is a business.

Maybe I'm nostalgic and a bit of a sap but isn't football kind of all about the local kid, kicking a ball against his garden wall in the shadow of his home team's ground? Pelé grew up in the slums of São Paulo; Maradona learned to play with oranges because he couldn't afford to buy a football. Sepp Blatter, the current President of FIFA, is adamant that the professional game and the game at the lowest levels must essentially be played in the same way, with the same ethos and with the same ethics (hence no video technology at the World Cup, but that's for another day).

But what are the chances of a young chap in London breaking a top team in one of the top footballing leagues (England/Spain) where clubs, under pressure for instant success, simply splash a load of cash on already established names. With all the money floating around it's hard to see how a local kid could make it on talent and pluckiness alone.

I was getting thoroughly depressed with all this buzzing in my head until I remembered a superb article on this very subject written last year by my favourite sports journalist (he is also IMHO the best sports journalist of them all).

Tom Humphries' journalism during the 2010 World Cup in South Africa read more like a travel blog than a back page sports column. After a month of Humphries' recounting South Africa's rich cuisine, its (ahem) "interesting" social hierarchy and apparently bewildering traffic laws, I had the impression Humphries enjoyed the travel side of the World Cup much more than the football itself (which let's be honest was enormously disappointing). Yet in spite of the oftentimes tenuous link to the football, Humphries' writing always had an edge which left you thinking.

In the particular article which I recalled yesterday, Humphries discusses the reckless abandon with which the World's biggest football clubs spend their money on foreign players. Home grown talent, most especially in England, is overlooked in (oftentimes vain) attempts to contract the next wonder player from Italy, Brazil or the Far East. Just think of Ryan Giggs vs Juan Seb Veron; or Frank Lampard vs Lucas Levia; I mean who would you rather...

The detailed research carried out by Humphries backed itself up in the World Cup itself with Germany (consisting of young players, all of whom were given the chance to play at the top level in Germany) progressing all the way to the semi finals before losing out to eventual winners Spain.

The real proof of the quality of the article was the effect it had on the RTE footballing panel. It provoked praise, admiration and even *shock horror* admissions of actually-I-think-I-might-have-got-it-wrong-in-my-past-analysis-there-Bill from rather bemused Johnny, Liam and Eamon.

Now if that doesn't win you a Pulitzer I don't know what will.

Click here to read the Tom Humphries article "Fewer chances for younger talent in a culture of fear" (Irish Times).