Football, money and an uncomfortable truth

Can a sports star speak honestly about money? Tottenham and Cameroon left-back Benoit Assou-Ekotto tried it and received a backlash for his candid comments but Matthew Syed, writing in The Times, feels the sporting purists among us should try a spoonful of common sense before considering their argument.

At last, a footballer who tells it straight. A footballer who gives an interview devoid of spin. A footballer whose opinion you may not like very much, but who cannot be faulted for authenticity.

At the weekend Benoît Assou-Ekotto, the Tottenham full back, was asked his reasons for leaving the French league to ply his trade over here. This is what he had this to say: “If I play football with my friends back in France, I can love football.

“But if I come to England, where I knew nobody and I didn’t speak English . . . why did I come here? For a job. I don’t understand why everybody lies. The president of my former club Lens, Gervais Martel, said I left because I got more money in England, that I didn’t care about the shirt. I said: ‘Is there one player in the world who signs for a club and says, ‘Oh, I love your shirt?’ Your shirt is red. I love it.’ He doesn’t care. The first thing that you speak about is the money.”

Those who like to think of themselves as sporting purists will doubtless be appalled by this. They will discern in the defender’s candour the long-anticipated apocalypse. If the arrival of money into sport triggered its long demise, this is the reading of the last rites. If sportsmen cannot even pay lip service to the idea that sport is about more than Mammon, where does that leave us?

But those of us living on Planet Earth will surely applaud a footballer refusing to indulge in the customary hypocrisy. The protestations of loyalty to a club’s badge have increased in recent years in direct proportion to the diminution of the sanctity of the clubs. Is it not welcome that a player is prepared to move beyond the usual self-serving homilies?

After all, in any other walk of life, the inclination to work for the highest bidder is considered perfectly normal. It reflects a natural impulse to do as well as possible for oneself and one’s family, oiling the wheels of capitalism and making the world turn. So, why is the mercenary tendency considered so treasonous in football?