Rotten to the Core

This weekend I read an article in the News of the World sports section (see here). Crystal Palace chairman Simon Jordon has expressed a damning opinion about football being 'rotten to the core'. Jordon has decided to walk away from football by selling Palace to the highest bidder after becoming fed up with all that football stands for these days.

In particular he cites that Lampard is not worth £150,000 a week, which is hard to disagree with. There was once a time when you could say that footballers' careers are short and therefore they need the money for after their career is over. However now the money situation has got too much. With people facing the credit crunch and tightening their belts, the outrageous demands of these celebrities and heroes is forcing clubs to spend more, to put up their prices and is seeing more and more clubs going into financial problems. the money issue has always been a problem with Argyle and year on year players turn down the club because they cannot compete with the big boys. How on earth can Ronaldo claim that he is treated like a 'slave'?

But Jordon doesn't rest all the blame on the players themselves, but shares it equally among the supporters who, whipped up into the frenzy that football has become' demand more and more from players and the clubs. He says that fans will demand the biggest signings and only the best will do - division winners, champions, cup finalists, Europe and beyond - year on year or else.

At the moment football has become a maelstrom, an unstoppable tempest, of itself going round and round until one day, which surely is coming soon, it will not be able to sustain itself and will explode leaving a big mess. As the economy starts to turn, that day could come sooner than expected.

As Jordon says "The reality is that football is a bulls*** world - an insidious, insipid, egotistical, greedy, self-motivated game ... the game descends into a bickering war over inflated contracts, lack of loyalty, greed, corruption and arrogance."