Goldenballs

Q: What do footballers and bankers have in common?

A: Win, lose or draw, they both get remunerated.

Anton Ferdinand, younger (and distinctly more average) sibling of England vice-captain Rio Ferdinand, recently moved from West Ham to Sunderland for a fee of £8 million. The widely claimed reason for the move was Ferdinand junior’s wage demands of £50,000 a week not being met by his current employers.

So what does he do? He joins another club that are prepared to pay him the desired £3 million a year in wages. In his defence, Sunderland was not the only suitor, and this type of practice is commonplace in the modern game.

Equally as recurring are squad players who feature in ten games a season still being paid a yearly wage of multiple millions, and players who’re consistently underperforming and underachieving being remunerated at the same level had they been successful.

The point is, name me another line of business where these kinds of practices are so frequent?

Well, how about the banking sector?

In the words of Mohammad Yunus, 2006 Nobel Prize winner and globally renowned micro-financier/ethical investor talking about the role of banks in the sub-prime crisis:

“The banks gave the impression that they were almost perfect, and then we find there is a fundamental flaw in the structure of the system. The regulators allowed them to bundle the risk so that nobody could see what was inside, and then pass it around the world to people who had nothing to do with it”

Ok, so the Banking/Premier League analogy doesn’t apply here, but delve deeper into the philosophies of Mr Yunus and the parallels become clearer. He continues:

“We don’t seem to be accusing anybody over this whole debacle. It is as if nobody is responsible. We can all go off and play golf: the taxpayer will take care of the problem. When things go well the bankers take the profit, and when it goes wrong they are compensated. This is not symmetrical.”

Paying footballers £3 million a year to (occasionally) compete in a medium-sized business pool (Manchester United turned over £245 million last year, HMV turned over £1895 million) is not symmetrical. Rewarding bankers to offload their own bad investments and walk away from them without recompense (a key driving force behind the credit crunch) is not symmetrical.

Win lose or draw, bankers and footballers get remunerated.