The Rio Ferdinand saga has once again raised the hoary old question of club versus country, always a potent question in international football, particularly the English game. Over the years this has generated much heat, except in the case of Ferdinand this old story has taken a very modern, and it must be said, fascinating twist.
In the classic battles between club and country the story often went as follows. A player would be called up to play for England. The weekend before the match, and remember in those days we did not have double headers and internationals were played midweek, often Wednesday, the player after playing in his club match on a Saturday would report injured and pull out. He was supposed to have suffered some tweak to some part of his body, usually a hitherto unknown muscle, and the club would inform the FA that he could not play.
But such were the powers of the player’s recovery, and the magic of the healing sponge used by the club – those were the days before football knew much about modern medicine – that come the following Saturday the player was once again fit to play for his club. Everyone knew it was a con and it did lead to arguments about the power wielded by the clubs and whether players were really much bothered about playing for their country. But not long after the international match was over the arguments were forgotten and the game moved on.
It was partly because of this, and partly because there was a genuine problem with fixture congestion and player fatigue, that the international calendar was drawn up. This has led to the present arrangements of back-to-back matches with an international often played on a Saturday. It gives national managers more time with their team and supposedly reduces the chances of a sudden withdrawal.
But, as Ferdinand has done, players can still pull out although the way it has come about shows how the old club v country debate has moved on. To be fair there is a long preamble to this story which goes back to what happened between Rio’s brother Anton and John Terry and Roy Hodgson deciding that Ferdinand did not form part of his plans for Euro 2012. Hodgson did claim this was for genuine football reasons but the suspicion has lingered that it was because he could not see Ferdinand and Terry co-habiting the same dressing room. Since then, while Terry has retired, Ferdinand’s selection has, like Banquo’s ghost, come to haunt the England manager. But I doubt if even Shakespeare could have imagined the circumstances in which this ghost would keep popping up.
So it first emerged on the Piccadilly Line, when having decided to travel on the London underground, Hodgson mentioned to a fellow passenger that he had not selected Ferdinand only for it to leak and cause him severe embarrassment. Then, after the England victory against Brazil, when he had every right to savour a rare victory, the most persistent questions were about our Rio going to Rio. And now having finally selected him he finds that the player, despite saying that he would jump at the chance of playing for England, does not it seems want to play after all. The explanation given is that his back condition is so delicate that it is only the specialist medical treatment his club Manchester United provide that can look after his needs. But it has since turned out that his needs are not so special to prevent him from jetting to Doha and enduring long haul flights, albeit we must assume in first class, to commentate on the England match for Al Jazeera.
It would be easy to jump to the conclusion that all this merely proves modern footballers are mercenaries. I do not subscribe to that or to the argument put forward that a modern player can hardly be blamed for shunning his country given the extremely unrealistic expectations of the nation and hostility generated by bad performances. The example given is of England in the 2010 World Cup.
But such conclusions do not take into account the very structure of football which makes it inevitable that a player has to choose his club before his country. Contrast football with the two other major team games in England: rugby and cricket. While rugby does have a viable club structure it is the international game that takes precedence. Nothing in an English winter matches the fervour generated by the Six Nations, or even the autumn internationals. And can you imagine a tour in football comparable to the Lions where a team is formed from four countries, who are deadly rivals on the international scene, including one country, Ireland, which is not even a member of the British Commonwealth? This is a battle between continents, northern hemisphere versus southern hemisphere, which would be unthinkable in football. And in cricket, as it is well known, the domestic game would shrivel up and die but for the money the international game, now controlled by the money bags of India, generate.
But in football such is the dominance of the domestic club game that international football could shrivel up, even die but the club game would go on. Indeed in the last few years the rise of the Premier League, combined with the power of the major European leagues, has meant that European championships, even the World Cups, no longer have the magic they once had. And remember, of all the competitions FIFA runs it is only the World Cup that makes money. But even the World Cup does not have the pulling power of the Champions League which is effectively a mid-week European League
Indeed, this power of League football was emphasised when the Times devoted much space to a supposed plan for a Dream League every other year in Qatar. While the story proved such a spoof that the Times had to apologise, the fact that anyone should even think of inventing a story about another club competition shows the dominance of club football.
So for a player, despite all the clichéd talk of the pride he feels in pulling on the national shirt, it is club and loyalty to his employer who provides him the bulk of his income that matters. And who can blame the player?
In the case of Ferdinand his decision to travel to Doha to broadcast suggests that he is also looking to his future beyond football. This is increasingly in the television studio for ex players and if Ferdinand has decided that maybe the place from where he will watch goings on in Rio next year then he is surely entitled to that choice. Many of us given such a choice would make the same decision. So let us not load players with high moral aspirations when they, like us, are just making the most realistic career plans.
Mihir Bose’s latest book: Game Changer: How the English Premier League Came to Dominate the World has been published by Marshall Cavendish for £14.99
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