Player loyalty is a dormant concept and fans need to stop dreaming.

25 January 2011 14:30
Any examples in modern football are the exception, not the rule. Almost every time player X leaves club Z you can be sure that it won’t be long before someone asks “where is the loyalty in the game?” Leaving aside the obvious problem with the most recent Ibrox departure – someone who plays for Rangers, then later moves to Celtic before coming back again thereafter to Rangers is not your poster child for the campaign – there exists yet an emotional attachment to the idea that players should display ‘loyalty’ over and above almost any other quality. Not only is this unrealistic but also comes close to misunderstanding what is important in a player and his attitude. Quite where, or indeed when, these players are supposed to gain their apprenticeship is a little hard to fathom. After all, the life of a talented young player – and here we’re talking boys not much older than toddlers and little past the stage of watching Barney the Dinosaur – means they are involved in football, often with multiple teams, multiple nights of the week and much of the weekend. They are training or playing for the school, the league team, the county side and the opportunities are limited for them to go to games and to develop the types of ties most normal supporters take for granted. Even allowing for the increased TV and multimedia coverage of football today, it is becoming all too common to see those boys on the fields in Scotland playing but with the replica shirts on their backs suggesting allegiances to the cash-rich and exotic teams playing outwith the Scottish nation. The attraction of the home-grown hero is too strong to dismiss. It works well as an archetype in all sports and is equally as evocative in other spheres, war being the least of them. Who wouldn’t warm to a young lad who spends his time at one club, representing those who pay his wages and playing out as reality all the dreams held by those in the stands? Winning trophies; breaking records; displaying all the best characteristics of a hero footballer. Leaving aside the harsh fact that many Scottish youngsters have found their early entry into the Rangers side punctuated by excessive abuse and intolerance from the faithful, it’s perfectly acceptable to wish for a side filled with the spirited and Rangers-daft likes of Durrant. Although it is interesting to note that many of the best Rangers players of the modern era haven’t been boyhood heroes and, indeed, our greatest goalscorer twice turned down the chance to join the Club. In many ways, fans would be better placed praying for the loyalty displayed by mercenaries, because with that comes the assumption of a degree of professionalism. Too many players are labelled ‘mercenary’ in a clearly pejorative fashion, but we should accept eleven real mercenaries over eleven docile and loyal Bears. How loyal would you like people to be?  To the point that they support anything a regime does or says? Perhaps extending to the point that they sacrifice their own career development, or health, in order to facilitate the needs and emotional pull of the Club? You need only consider the words of many ex-players as they fall over themselves in the media to promote the party line to see how blind loyalty to an institution is not to be welcomed. In a world where cynicism and alternative viewpoints are so popular in the arts, and in everyday approach to the media and how the world works, it seems more than a little anachronistic to hold on to a view of players that – however well it may have worked in an era when the disparity of wealth between Joe Public and Rangers player was much closer – belongs to a bygone age.

Source: FOOTYMAD