Football is a widely watched form of entertainment, witha high emphasis on raw talent, emotion and of course money. Many males basetheir whole life around the sport, and many children of the younger generationlook up to such footballers like David Beckham, Cristiano Ronaldo and JohnTerry. However such role models are not all they seem, they are not so cleancut as they may appear on the football field. Many get involved in drugs,gambling and other scandals.
This issue ofwages is widely reported in the British press in a negative manner, withcontinuous stories about top player wages and rumours about owners of clubspumping even more money into the business of football. In recent weeks thepress had reported on several occasions that a Chelsea star had been injuredfor 18 months, and within that time, he had acquired in terms of wages £4.65Million, that equating to £62,500 a week. Other contentious issues that havebeen reported recently are that Premiership players are getting overpaid whilemany other important professionals such as Doctors and Surgeons only get paidalmost a tenth of this wage. During the domestic season in (2006/07) a campaignwas launched, below which describes the event and how it has helped encouragethe financial side of the sport to be investigated.
The topic of player’s wages has caused great debate andoutrage caused as top footballers such as John Terry and Cristiano Ronaldo werebeing paid a reported £150,000 a week and £200,000 a week respectively. Despitethe ever growing culture of money being fluttered around in the ‘beautifulgame’ on player wages, TV rights, sponsorshipand merchandise, the campaign of ‘Mayday for Nurses’ was launched, setto ask all players from the Premier League to donate a day’s wages to thecharity. The shocking element of this is that those who did not donate werefrom top Premiership teams such as; Chelsea, Man Utd and Arsenal, this is insome ways far from being acceptable, as it is reported nurses’ annual salarytotals just £25,000. By the end of the campaign which was due to end on thefinal day of the season (13th May) only a total of 255 players hadsigned up to donate, this is in great contrast to the 600 or so players in thePremiership. So with this in mind, it isclear that the Premiership stars who are supposed ‘role models’ to the youngergenerations, are not doing such a great job, they are still wishing to acceptludicrous wages when nurses are struggling to uphold a decent standard ofliving, trying to cope with the demands of training and succeeding in the job,as places seem to be very limited. There is a severe shortage of nurses acrossthe whole of England in the NHS, many are unable to carry on with training dueto financial commitments and it is estimated 25,000 trainee nurses will notcomplete full training due to this reason, but on the other hand to Premiershipplayers these fees would not be even a day’s wages. So for the campaign to takefull effect it is clear the footballers need to question their greed andperhaps open their cheque books and donate, for the good of the National HealthService. The British press reported this issue in contrasting ways, manymanagers and players were happy to donate with minimum fuss, but one outspokenmanager clearly wanted to be heard, 'I am disgusted with the manner in whichthis campaign has gone about its fundraising'. This portrays the Premiership manager to be rathercold hearted towards the current situation. Reports stated the manager hadwithdrawn the pledges made by players, classifying it as ‘blackmail’. TheLondon Metro reported that “The RCN, which administers the fundalongside their own, said it had only received about £200,000, someway off the£1,000,000 target they had set”. This is showing that many Premiership stars donot want to donate to a worthy cause. The Daily Express also reported on many occasions the issue regarding thecampaign, many of them being positive about the nurse’s conditions that theycurrently work but also how many premiership players aren’t hoarding theirgreed and donating back into the NHS. It suggested that behind theexpensive cars, luxurious houses and designer garments, they have hearts of‘gold’ as they donate to a cause that is not often funded in the correctmanner.?Dr Hertz quoted “With just threedays to go to the end of the Premiership season, it’s great to get so many moreplayers coming on board. I’ve now got backing from almost all of the clubs inthe Premiership”. Another case of players donating was reported in The Guardian“Henry was one of the first todonate - in his case, around £15,000 - to help thousands of nurses”.
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