What are we to make of footballers at their physical peak choosing to go and play in Saudi Arabia? Or, in an adjacent question this week, how much money is enough?
That’s what seemed to be passing through Ivan Toney’s mind as he stood listening, glassy-eyed, to the chant fans of his new club Al-Ahli had composed for him in the Kingdom. It’s quite beautiful actually, sounds like plainchant, though it’s light on the cheeky lyrical creativity so beloved back home, containing as it does only two words (his name).
Luckily for Toney, he will have plenty of time free to consider soft furnishing options in his new pad in Jeddah this week, because the international break will be going on without him. The forthcoming internationals are why Netherlands boss Ronald Koeman was talking about Steven Bergwijn, newly of Saudi’s Al-Ittihad, this week.
Bergwijn wasn’t considered for selection by the national team. ‘The book is basically closed to him. He knows what I think about this,’ Koeman said.
‘When you are 26, your main ambition should be sporting, not financial. These are choices that players make.’
We know money can buy happiness. But studies suggest the threshold beyond which it cannot is a salary somewhere between £60,000-120,000 per year. Quite a lot, of course, though the Nobel-prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman put the cut-off at the very bottom end of that scale.
Above that, get richer if you like, but you would be better off spending your time cultivating deep friendships, learning, and making memorable experiences. Now the Toneys and Bergwijns of this world have an additional challenge in seeking the good life. Comparison, and its famous joy-thieving qualities.
Further research has shown that if your peer group is making more money than you, you’re more likely to be dissatisfied with what you’re getting. It’s called the relative income effect.
And footballers are in a challenging space for that kind of rivalry. Not only are the ludicrous sums paid to their colleagues plastered everywhere, but they are also, funnily enough, a very competitive bunch. You only have to have occasionally proposed a race to that lamp post to men on a night out to know any viable challenge will be contested, no matter how arbitrary.
And this question of football earnings isn’t arbitrary, many tell me. This is about deploying a special, short-term gift in the most financially lucrative way. These sums will change players’ lives, not just for this generation and the next, but for generations after that.
Another spin could be to point to man-of-the-match performances delivered by N’Golo Kante at the Euros this summer. Surely that is proof a kickabout in Saudi could be a career enhancer, in addition to everything else. True, the lower intensity and warm strolls do seem to have helped Kante’s chronic hamstring injury in a way that Chelsea could not. The Premier League is punishing. But Kante is 33. He has achieved much.
And a football career is short. If he can extend his international career while claiming joke sums in a league that gives the equivalent challenge of dropping down three divisions in England, why not?
If you can do it while avoiding Jordan Henderson-levels of criticism concerning hypocrisy and don’t mind being accused of being a pawn in a problematic state’s nation-building, help yourself.
But if you really are going to sacrifice the privilege of playing week in, week out at the pinnacle of your sport in front of the best supporters in the world at the Brentford Community Stadium, at Tottenham, Old Trafford and Anfield, don’t expect to feel good about it.
Because the key point is that limit of time. You could theoretically keep making money without end. But time is finite. If you ask the public what they’d rather have, more money or more time, 60 per cent say money. Most people would take the Saudi job without a thought. But the research shows without fail: choose time, and your life is better.
The 50 million or so Toney is supposed to bank is an incomprehensible sum, and you’re thinking how bad could it be – I’d do anything for a year for that money.
But there is an opportunity cost. In his case, the player he could have been, the internationals where he would have scored and, maybe, less time with friends, enriching his life. The memories that fundamentally are worth – yes – even more.
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