Today’s stars unlikely to suffer same sad hardship as Frank
IT WAS Frank Worthington’s funeral on Friday, the final farewell to one of football’s great showmen. He was laid to rest in his home town of Halifax, leaving behind a treasure trove of warm memories from a peripatetic career that took in 11 Football League clubs.with his non-league adventures added, it spanned a quarter of a century and few who saw him in the flesh will have regretted the cost of the ticket.
He was a born entertainer for whom a football pitch was a stage, a West Yorkshire Elvis who could turn water into wine. His signature goal will stand as the keepie-uppie volleyed classic for Bolton against Ipswich in 1979 but, as Worthington noted, he scored even better ones that weren’t televised.
The eight England caps he won were a fraction of the count his talent deserved.
Memories don’t pay the bills though.worthington’s widow
Carol, who is living off benefits, is being forced to sell their home in Huddersfield because she cannot afford the mortgage.
She was his carer for the last few years of his life as Alzheimer’s – the profession’s deadly, emptying curse – took its sad toll.
Her plight is a grim postscript to a life that brought joy to so many.
Whenworthington made his England debut in 1974, the average weekly wage for top division footballers was £100 a week. The wage cap of £20 had only been lifted just over a decade earlier.
Worthington’s longevity meant he was still playing in the First Division, as it was then, in 1983-84 for Southampton by which time the average weekly pay was up to £800 but he, like his contemporaries, missed the boat when it came to football’s wage explosion.
Erling Haaland is currently being touted around Europe’s big clubs as potentially the sport’s first £1million-per-week footballer.the instinctive response to numbers like these is revulsion and that football has gone insane – yet perhaps a second take is due.
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with footballers maximising their income if it can ensure their later lives – and those of their families – do not end up like Carol Worthington’s.
A playing career is short and if they are to strike it rich, they need to do so while they are at the peak of their powers.there are only so many coaching and punditry jobs available afterwards.
IF clubs are willing to pay them thousands of pounds per week then that, by definition, is what they are worth.why shouldn’t they take it? The argument becomes stretched when you venture into Haaland territory – he will be unable to spend all the money he accrues in his career even if he is reincarnated several times over.
But future-proofing will come in handy for the vast majority.
Indeed, lower down the food chain, players should be actively looking to squeeze every drop out of the game that they can.
In League One the average salary is around £2,000 per week; in League Two around £1,500.
In Scotland, outside the Old Firm, you are into real world wages. The average weekly wage at Livingston – this season’s Scottish League Cup finalists – is £1,000.
Players at clubs like these will not be spending every day on the golf course when they retire.
In the same wayworthington, being born into a less fortunate football generation, could never have set himself up for life.
It is true that he should have been more shrewd with the money he did earn from the game. He lived a full life off the field, shall we say, and would have been no poster boy for financial planning.
But be that as it may, it is a hard heart that is not touched by his final, diminished circumstances.
It sticks in the craw when massive deals turn headlines into nought-fests but footballers should not be begrudged what they earn simply because they are footballers.
The wages for today’s stars may be eye-watering but better that surely than the post-retirement struggle for those who deserved a happier ending.