A lot is made about how modern football has been ruined by mercenaries. The incredibly talented athletes we love to watch are supposedly just doing their jobs for the astronomical sums of money we conspire to afford them. It’s said that they have no passion for the game to which they’ve devoted their lives and sacrificed their futures and hold no loyalty to the employers who demonstrate the same or the fans who are all too eager to turn on them with the weather. This is reason enough to despise and admonish them every chance we get.
If only these footballers truly cared, we say. If only they demonstrated the same passion that we do. Then they would be doing it right.
But as the current fog of idiocy that has surrounded Gerard Pique demonstrates, that’s not true either. In the minds of too many fans and pundits, footballers must live up to impossible and illogical standards and are only allowed to be wrong.
