‘Lionel Messi is the new Messiah’, according to the newspaper headlines after Barcelona beat Arsenal. He did score four magnificent goals, but to crown him the Messiah is going a touch too far. Besides, this week Barcelona acquired an honorary chairman, who has made a very legitimate claim to such a title for quite a few years, Johan Cruijff, aka ‘El Salvador’ (The Redeemer).

 

Considering this, ‘Il Piccolo Coccodrillo’, the nickname for Alberto Aquilani from Liverpool, sounds better.  Or even ‘Super Pipo’, the affectionate name given to the AC Milan striker Filippo Inzaghi. This is typical Italian; they have finally secured a hero only to swiftly baptise him Super Pipo.

 

Even extremely unflinching defenders are honoured with a nickname. We used to have Jose Antonia Camacho, who was referred to by admiring fans as ‘The Razor’. Or think back to Andoni Goicoechea who was commonly known as ‘The Butcher from Bilbao’, or in Spanish as ‘El Gigante de Alonsotegui’ (The Giant from Alonsotegui). The ankle of Maradonna and Bernd Schuster’s knee can tell tales about their encounters, too.

 

When you are called Schweinsteiger and control the midfield of Bayern Munich you do not really need a nickname.

 

‘The Butcher of Bilbao’, it sounds like the title of an opera. ‘Ladies and gentlemen the role of The Butcher of Bilbao is sung this evening by Placido Domingo, with Lesley Garrett and Katherine Jenkins taking the roles of WAGs.’ Halfway through the piece Placido’s well placed kick halves the promising young tenor Marcelo Álvarez.

 

From time to time you do hear complaints from the man in the street about the amount of taxpayers’ money that is wasted on opera. My answer: well, if the Butcher of Bilbao were an opera performed at the Royal Opera House, it would not have been necessary to have 50 police personnel carriers on standby just in case the audience had gone on the rampage.

 

No one would even think of throwing fireworks onto the stage. Also, even when disappointed with a performance, choruses chanting widespread insults from the audience are very manageable. Nicknames, too, are a bit more sophisticated compared to the one handed to Clarence Seedorf, the black player for AC Milan: Willy Wonka from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

 

The most expensive ticket for a top notch performance of Aida at the Royal Opera House is still five times cheaper than the most costly ticket for the FA Cup Final at Wembley. This is aside from the fact that football tickets are heavily subsidised by local councils; if you were to take into account the cost of providing adequate security, tickets would be twice as expensive.

 

Bankers on the whole are not given nicknames. They have to make do with general derogatory terms such as ‘fat cats’ or ‘greedy bastards’ and bonus payments are ‘hideously offensive’. Last year Barcelona paid Lionel Messi a regular salary of ten million Euros plus an additional four million Euros as part of bonus schemes.

 

During the same period the RBS chief executive took home 1.2 million pounds. This amount is roughly equal to the average take home pay of the top 400 Premier League players, which is 1.1 million pounds.

 

Out of the twenty European football clubs with the highest turnover, seven are located in England. At the same time, the combined borrowings by Premier League clubs amount to three billion pounds. Small or big, all clubs share one trait: they have an enormous amount of debts. Throughout Europe, clubs have run into financial difficulties. The fact is that the players have become too expensive.

 

In my home town Arnhem, our local club Vitesse has been rescued several times using taxpayers’ money. At the moment Vitesse is fighting relegation from the Dutch Premier League. Still, the average yearly earnings of Vitesse players are substantially more than that of the Dutch Prime Minister.

 

Smaller clubs cannot keep their home grown talents. Even when they are still underage youngsters, they are lured away by offers from the big clubs funded by their borrowings.

 

In spite of these enormous investments, for the first time in seven years none of the clubs from the most important football competition in the world, the Premier League, have been able to reach the semi finals of the Champions League. Football faces a financial crisis. It is time to bring on a Butcher of Bilbao or at the very least a Piccolo Coccodrillo.

© Arnold Jansen op de Haar
© Translation Holland Park Press
 
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