Football FanCast columnist Joe Jennings looks at the streams of wealth within the English game and feels it needs to be distributed in other areas in order to assure the longevity of the once beautiful game.

I've held the belief for a while now; it remains prominent in my thoughts. Quite simply, money is tearing the beloved game we call football apart, its one vicious circle, that's for sure.

It starts with the sheer ridiculous amount that has been pumped in by one of the cleanest brand in the business, Sky, and ends up with the players being paid ridiculous amounts of money. It is a vicious circle which is gradually affecting our National Game. This MUST be addressed. 
 
Every child's hope and dream is to one day play professional football for the club they love, those were the dreams I had. As a child I wanted to become famous and enjoy the money, highlight as any other celebrity would do. But then you realise, has the world gone mad? Thousands per week, for merely being able to kick a piece of leather around accurately.
 
We really do need a sense of realism when we have nurses earning a petty £10,000 a year for the work they do, it takes the biscuit. The fundamental reason for the demise of football as the working man's game is that, like everything else that is subject to the media's twist on market forces, the game has gone BIG business.
 
The Football Association are largely to blame, as in my opinion, it was their greedy desire to take full control of the revenue generated by English football by coaxing the big clubs away from the Football League using Sky TV's money. The players were heroes back then, but the distinction between then and now is that during the 1980s they were regarded as just honest sportsmen, not the media soap-celebrities they are in this era, this saddens me greatly.
 
Why do I get the sense that footballers are becoming defined by their aggression, arrogance, greed and lack of maturity? No matter where the root of the problem lies, greed is the main issue. It is a sad indictment on our custodians that greed has become rife in sport, it reflects the self-serving society we call Britain.
 
Maybe some of the players aren't to blame. Perhaps you can blame agents and advisers who are seemingly desperate to cash in on the talented athletes. Some footballers are barely old enough to drive, let alone drink and they're thrown in front of a load of money spinning profiteers from a variety of companies whose main interest is to exploit and "milk" footballers, cash in on their success.
 
I love this game so much, it is like an addiction but it saddens me greatly that certain elements of it are contributing to ruining something that has for 130 years been the greatest sport on Earth. Greed is a motive of players and agents, whether one can be blamed more than the other I don't know.
 
As fans, we would do well to get a ball and improve ourselves. Forget the greedy crooks? It would appear all sports are being ruined by too much money. I love the thrill of football, not the egos that exist within it.
 
The whole footballing world needs to seriously get a grip and start spending money at the grass roots not on the greedy "milkers". There will always be people who play football because they love it, the less they are paid will not reduce how well they play but the extra money spent on kids and mini-leagues would totally revolutionise the game. As fans our eternal love for the game will never die but unless change is made the affection that enticed us to it may just begin to fade, of that I am certain. 

 

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