Lionel Messi, Dani Alves, playing/working for free and football as martyrdom
This was written around 6 months ago — the case studies of Messi and Dani Alves are perhaps no longer as relevant, but the message of the piece remains. The topic has been brought back to prominent discourse, again by Barcelona, due to the ongoing saga surrounding Frenkie de Jong and Barca’s apparent refusal to cough up wages owed to him, accompanied by their appeal that he should be concerned not by money but by a ‘love for the club’. In light of this fresh relevance, I’m hopeful this piece still has a place in the public discourse, and can provoke some thought into how we view the socioeconomic relationships within the football industry.
As distant as it now feels, cast your mind back to July and early August and the then unbelievable speculation that Lionel Messi might leave Barcelona – for free no less – upon the expiry of his contract. We’d heard it all before, the previous year in fact. Messi seemed likely to be signed by Manchester City for an astronomical 9 digit fee after he himself expressed a desire to leave, but Barcelona affirmed that the €700m release clause in Messi’s contract was the only way he’d be departing the club.
A year later, the unthinkable really did happen. The footballing monolith Lionel Messi ended his 21 year stay at Barcelona. In a press conference on the 8th of August, Messi tearfully confirmed what the Barca board had announced a few days earlier; he would be leaving.
Barcelona president Joan Laporta, who had initially held this position from 2003–10 before being re-elected in January ‘21, ascribed Barca’s inability to renew Messi’s contract to financial and structural issues imposed on the club by La Liga. He also stated he was hoping the now 7 time Ballon d’Or winner would play for free.
The specific restriction Laporta was referring to was the floating salary cap La Liga had introduced in 2013; player wages and acquisition costs must not exceed 70% of club revenues. The drastic impact of the pandemic had compounded existing struggles at the club, and Barca needed to trim €200m (£170m) worth of yearly wages in order to meet the now much lower salary cap imposed upon them by their falling revenues.
So, there’s the background. Barcelona fans, as one might expect, joined Messi in sorrow upon his farewell. The more prominent emotional response, though, seemed to be anger. Much of this was directed at former president Bartomeu for his mismanagement, as well as at some of their other players that were sitting on big contracts and seemingly refusing to take the drastic pay cuts – at Barca or elsewhere – that were required to re-sign Messi. It becomes more complicated when you factor in the signings of Memphis, Aguero, Eric Garcia and Luuk de Jong who each wouldn’t have been able to be registered if Barca didn’t cut their wage bill.
The specifics, though, don’t really matter. Why shouldn’t Messi, or any other elite level player at a club that has hit financial difficulties (more or less all of them now) play for free? They’ve already earned more than enough money to live the rest of their lives pretty comfortably, right? If they really care about the fans, why not continue to provide their services without expecting a wage in return?
This question was surely brought back to fans’ minds, even if not finding itself in public conversation so much anymore, upon Dani Alves signing a short team deal for – you guessed it – Barcelona. Early reports claimed Alves was essentially playing for free, but this suggestion was of course untrue and would not be legal.
The minimum wage for a player in La Liga sits at €155,000/year (£112,000) which outlets such as Marca suggested was the amount Alves would actually be set to receive. Libertad Digital, however, have reported that Alves is earning around €28,000 (£23,500) a week, which seems far more probable and is about right for a 38 year old who is winding down his playing career while helping to mentor and develop Barca’s young talents off the pitch. ‘Elite footballer & club icon to play for free’ is a much better headline though, I suppose.
Let’s get back to that question – why wouldn’t a mega rich footballer, whose beloved long term club have found themselves in a spot of financial bother, play for free? My initial reaction would be, why should they?
Elite level football is certainly more a business than a sport. And yet, the usual relationships between owners, employees and customers have been completely warped. The club owners & board members are typically not the face of their business – the head coach & players are. The customers, or fans, are essentially being provided a product, but it’s more than that. Being a fan extends much farther than to the four corners of the pitch, especially considering the millions who support their clubs from abroad that have never actually seen said pitch in person. And being a football fan continues far beyond 90 minutes once or twice a week. It demands a huge emotional investment, it fills up your social media feed and many of your day to day thoughts and conversations, it’s who you are. An identity in and of itself.
The inherent sense of loyalty that comes with fandom – a ‘proper fan’ supports the club rain or shine, win or loss, until the day they die! – is palpable, powerful, and above all else, profitable.
Most fans can’t and won’t simply switch off what is such a large part of their identity. They won’t turn their back on their club, even after it has been taken over by corporate billionaires or the investment fund of a government with questionable human rights records. They won’t stop turning up to the stadium or switching the TV on every week, even if their side is fielding a player with sexual abuse claims levelled against them. This sense of loyalty means most fans aren’t going to shop around for a higher quality fan experience, so it almost doesn’t matter what’s happening on and off the pitch, so long as it is in fact happening.
Protests happen, sure. To what end? When Manchester United fans broke into Old Trafford last year to protest the Glazer family’s ownership of the club following their involvement in the attempted establishment of a European Super League, did the Glazers sell up? No. They appeased the fans by signing former player Cristiano Ronaldo (a player who, as referred to earlier, has sexual abuse claims against him) from Juventus amidst rumours he was heading to rivals Manchester City.
The only thing, then, that fans are truly terrified of and will not accept, is the club ceasing to exist (or if you’re from Wimbledon, relocating elsewhere). So when financial difficulties inevitably arise, because football clubs are not typically profitable businesses and there are only so many individuals and organisations willing to sink millions to chase success or launder their image, the fans won’t take it lying down. Some level of anger is of course directed at the owners for not caring or being incompetent, but as we mentioned, the employees of clubs are the most prominent figures in the football business. It is actually very rare for football clubs to disappear and then have no successor, but this fact won’t provide much comfort to a fan whose club is experiencing economic turmoil.
When such a large proportion of spending for a football club is their wage bill, the obvious solution is for the players to play for less or indeed for nothing at all. They’ll hardly struggle to get by, they’re overpaid anyway, and they owe the fans that much.
It is tempting to retort “Would you work for free if that was the only way to stay in your current job?” and the obvious answer is no, I couldn’t pay the bills, and I don’t owe them anything anyway. I’ll go and get a job elsewhere.
Other than perhaps the fear of not being able to financially support themselves short term, why wouldn’t footballers abide by the same logic? Their careers are shorter than most, they need to eke out as much as they can to build up a nest egg large enough to be able to finance the remaining ~40 years of their lives. And ultimately, in my view, they owe nothing to their clubs either. They are not martyrs, they do not live and die by the badge, just as I didn’t live and die by the Tesco badge when I was working there stacking shelves.
Footballers are employees. They sell their labour, as well as their entire image, to a football club in exchange for a wage, agreed upon when signing their contract. The difference is that football is a ludicrously wealthy business, and so an elite footballers’ labour is valued much higher than the majority of other wage labourers. If you don’t agree that their contribution to society should be valued dozens of times more than that of, say, a nurse, then your problem is not with football specifically but with the capitalist mode of production as a whole and the way in which it distributes resources.
This idea of martyrdom extends to players being derided and branded snakes for wanting to move when they have better offers on the table elsewhere, whether it be to fulfil aspirations of playing at the elite level and winning trophies or simply for a bigger wage.
Jack Grealish is one example – he might have forced his way out of Aston Villa when Tottenham Hotspur tried to buy him in 2018. Instead, he accepted Villa’s decision not to sell him as they believed Spurs’ bid did not meet his value. He went on to captain the club, achieve promotion to and survival in the Premier League and then earn the club £100m to replace him & rebuild the team when he was eventually sold. And yet, he was booed on his return to Villa with new club Manchester City because he didn’t want to play for a lower mid-table side for his entire career. Why would he? His teammates in the England national team were playing Champions League football & earning considerably more than he was. Now only a couple years off the theoretical peak of his career, why would he not look elsewhere for trophies & riches if they weren’t soon approaching at Villa Park?
This abuse is written off in a couple of different ways. I admit that I as a Spurs fan had jokingly referred to Kane as a snake during the transfer saga that followed his request to leave last summer, but I’m not going to directly send him abuse and I wouldn’t boo him. I found it tricky to begrudge him for wanting to leave the mess that Tottenham had become over the previous few years. So some of it is ‘just a joke’ but there’s an obvious line.
The other way abusive fans wave away those reminding them that footballers are human beings is by saying something along the lines of ‘He’s got £xxx,xxx reasons a week to cheer him up! He’s hiding behind crocodile tears and piles of money. He doesn’t care about the fans anyway.’ If that’s the case, why do you care about the players? Why do you continue to long for footballers that ‘play for the shirt’ when you’ll dismiss that such a player could even exist? What fans really seem to want is that a player be consistently good & never leave. If they’re either not good enough for the team or in fact too good and frustrated that the club can’t meet their ambitions, a lot of fans will abuse them without hesitation.
I can accept a lack of sympathy for wealthy individuals when so many of us are increasingly struggling to afford the basic necessities of food and shelter. But your enemies are not multi millionaire footballers, they are multi billionaire industrialists.
Leo Messi won’t work for free. Dani Alves almost certainly isn’t working for free. The owner of your football club isn’t doing it out of a genuine love for the club or even the sport, nor out of the kindness of their heart. They’re chancers trying to flip it for profit, or they’re wilfully losing money to launder their image. Football, despite its warped relationship dynamics, is a business like any other.
Thanks for reading! I plan to post more frequently from now on, so if you enjoyed this piece give me a follow on here as well as on twitter (@spagyama). Huge thank you to Sav (@ScoutedSxv) for giving me a hand with the editing of this piece, go and give him a follow too. We also plan on reviving our group project, Chatalytics (@ChatalyticsPod) some time in the near future, so keep an eye out for that.
