LIfe is too cushy for footballers in SA to give up for R5m-a-year deals overseas.
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There’s a story doing the rounds about a Kaizer Chiefs player who has just turned down a R5 million-a-year deal in Turkey because he is quite happy to remain big in Jozi, earning about half that amount, without the added pressure.
He’s not the first local player to scoff at the lure of the euro or the British pound and, sadly, he won’t be the last. Life is good in Mzansi.
Remember how many of the class of 2010 were touted to be on the verge of signing deals to go overseas? Most are still here, because the life of an average to decent footballer in South Africa has become cushy, especially at one of the big three clubs. Let us be clear; if our football clubs were dominating Africa and regularly reaching the latter stages of the Champions League, then you could understand why players would want to stay local and lekker.
And, if South African clubs were dominating the continent, the domino effect would be a far stronger national team. The sad truth, of course, is that Bafana continue to wallow somewhere between Average Lane and Eishville, despite being the focal point of the richest league on the continent.
We are the England of Africa, flush with money, but with no football fortune. With every passing year, South African clubs – gallant Orlando Pirates aside – seem to treat Africa with more disdain, an inconvenience that gets in the way of another free weekend eKasi or at the mall.
The likes of new Chiefs coach Steve Komphela, and other Amakhosi alumni like Lucas Radebe, Shoes Moshoeu and Mark Williams would happily have given a left nut to leave these shores with an open return ticket, desperate to make it big abroad, to come back richer, but also as infinitely wiser footballers to serve the national team. Those days are gone now. The hunger and desperation have been eliminated from the current generation, whose mediocrity is rewarded handsomely, even as our football stock continues to fall on the continent, never mind the football world.
And yet, South African football maintains a bizarre arrogance, fuelled by the fool’s gold lavished on them by TV money. That is why a player can turn down a life-changing fortune abroad, because he knows that along with those extra riches comes an inconvenient level of expectation from a far harsher audience.
One’s pockets may be deeper in Europe, but the stage is also bigger, the lights that much brighter. Entire cities expect. A Soweto derby is forgotten in a matter of days, but a Galatasaray-Besiktas war swirls in the air for months.
The intensity is the same across major cities all over Europe. These things matter, deeply. It’s no wonder players like Moshoeu and Williams could deliver on the ultimate stage for Bafana, because they had been in wars every week for their clubs, desperate to show their worth and keep their place in the team.
Overseas, away from crowds who cheer for a flick of the heel instead of a killer pass, there is pressure to deliver more than the once-a-month display that the regular fan in Soweto is happy with, and that kind of responsibility seems too much for many of our current crop.
We need to go back to celebrating the departure of our best talents to bigger stages. But what hope do we have, when a young man turns a blind eye not just to a fortune, but the chance to be much more rounded as a player and a human being?
Cristiano Ronaldo earns millions every week, but he is seen in his home town only a few days a year.
Lionel Messi, the Argentinian assassin, is a Spanish citizen now, as he’s lived in Barcelona that long.
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