From our point of view, footballers should play for love of playing and the money should be a happy bonus, and the truth is clearly the opposite. However, same as when Beckham went to LA and other similar examples, he’s going to go and experience a new culture steeped in history and see things which the majority of us here, myself included, never get the chance to. Throw in the unbelievable benefit to his children of spending part of their youth learning and growing in a very different part of the world, the fact that he’s achieved everything he could possibly want to achieve professionally, and yes, an enormous amount of money, and it becomes an opportunity that is too good to turn down.
My sister in law, Yorkshire born and raised, has two children, one born in Bosnia and the other in Hungary, who have lived between them in those two countries, Thailand and Vienna, they are 10 and 5 respectively and have learnt and absorbed more than any children of the same age I’ve seen in this country. Meanwhile my sister in law and her husband are seeing the world, making friends everywhere and continuing to have adventures now in their forties. This is on the salary of international school teachers, not elite world famous athletes.
We have purist expectations of how players conduct their careers, but ultimately they are people just like us who have infinite potential motivators just like us. Le Tissier was the hot shot who just preferred being the main man in an sme to being a cog in a large corporation. Alan Shearer achieved the pinnacle at a young age and then saw his career out somewhere he loved and cared about rather than hit the stratosphere somewhere glamourous. Phil Nevill, Nicky Butt and Solskjaer were far happier being business supporting at a huge organisation than main men at a start up. And maybe the players who go to China, India, Australia, USA etc at an age where they still have something to offer the top leagues are doing so because, having achieved a huge amount already, they want to experience life out there while they’re young enough to really enjoy it because when they were 18 they couldn’t go on a ‘gap yaar’ because they were to busy dedicating themselves to making it as top class professional footballers in the first place.
Or maybe it’s just the money, but you know what, these guys invest so much time, emotion and effort into getting to the top of their careers that they have every right to decide what career moves they should next make and it’s pretty arrogant to judge them for it. None of you would be thrilled about having your motives question of you took a high flying position with an overseas company,m I’d imagine.
You've spectacularly missed the point.
I'm the son of a child refugee and have experienced many different cultures and heritages. Like many of your family members, I greatly value those experiences, and hopefully they have made my loved ones and me a more rounded and better human being.
But Gareth Bale is one of the richest sports stars in the world, with only a couple of elite years left. If he wants to live in China, or Kenya, or Peru, or Antarctica, he can make a home there with his family any time he likes once he's retired. Hopefully he's got decades of very financially comfortable life ahead of him.
However, if he goes to China now, he won't be scoring bicycle kicks in CL finals, and creating moments that will live in the memory of hundreds of milllion people forever. His top flight career, and the possibility of sporting glory, will be over.
Bale's situation is not comparable to one of us taking "a high flying position with an overseas company".
If he's just about the Benjamins, then he'll depart for China. But he could still earn a fantastic amount of money, stay in Europe, and create some spectacular moments that will give him and his children a warm and irreplaceable glow of satisfaction as he sits in his rocking chair in his dotage.
The chavski midfielder Oscar went to China when he was only 25. On his day, he was a world class talent. Now he's invisible to most football fans and absent from the Brazilian national team. And I suspect like many young South Americans, there may be shadowy figures motivated by greed who determined his fate.
Bale has no such constraints (despite the reports of the alleged criminal activities of some of his extended family).
He has the opton of saying: "I've made a ton of money in my six seasons in Madrid, and I'll take the smallest reduction in overall earnings my agent can negotiate over the next four seasons to ensure I'm still competing at the very highest level for a top European club."
I choose, therefore I am.
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