..i’m Just happy if they’re good footballers. Naismith engaged with the fans and demonstrated a political belief but he wasn’t any better thought of as a player.
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Brendan Janus
Player Valuation: £40m
Neither was Edward Heath !!
Gladystweet
Player Valuation: £50m
Inchy?
orly
Please check with me for Blammo criteria
Disagree with that entirely. His shortcomings as a footballer were often mitigated in fan's opinion by his good deeds. And regardless, you've just shown what I meant; he is memorable for something other than kicking a little ball about.
Stubbs and Weir? You've got this vague recollection that they defended stoutly. Simon Davies? Yeah, he was bad wasn't he, stayed for a bit, left, not heard about him since, oh well, onto the next blank in the memory.
Brendan Janus
Player Valuation: £40m
No, the former Prime Minister !!
It is difficult for footballers to engage politically due to the money they earn.
If a footballer on £250k a week says he believes public services should be cut and that nurses/police/firefighters shouldn't get a pay rise then everyone would think how awful they were. We know that people in the top 1% of earners generally vote for lower tax parties (thought I've never seen figures for sportsmen who generally come from working class backgrounds) so we'd expect footballers to probably vote Tory more than Labour - certainly compared to the people they grew up with.
So that only really means the only acceptable views are the more left wing views. So whilst Gary Lineker/Big Nev/Peter Reid are (rightly in my view) praised for their views in my left wing bubble, if say Ian Rush was saying "let them drown" about the migrant crisis he'd be destroyed. Even though a lot of people share that view.
If a footballer on £250k a week says he believes public services should be cut and that nurses/police/firefighters shouldn't get a pay rise then everyone would think how awful they were. We know that people in the top 1% of earners generally vote for lower tax parties (thought I've never seen figures for sportsmen who generally come from working class backgrounds) so we'd expect footballers to probably vote Tory more than Labour - certainly compared to the people they grew up with.
So that only really means the only acceptable views are the more left wing views. So whilst Gary Lineker/Big Nev/Peter Reid are (rightly in my view) praised for their views in my left wing bubble, if say Ian Rush was saying "let them drown" about the migrant crisis he'd be destroyed. Even though a lot of people share that view.
Thanks in advance to @Groucho for clearing the thread topic
Good morning Toffees
The danger of missing deadlines means this thread has gone up a little after the event (and indeed has been touched on by former crushed Echo weasel Greg O'Keefe in his new role http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/41460584 ). There have been a number of threads and comments at the moment lamenting the atmosphere in the ground (again, this would have been a better question after Bournemouth than Burnley) and the general lack of empathy from player to fan and vice versa.
Would you be more interested in Everton players if they engaged with the real world a bit more and aired their political views?
I'm not a huge fan of the American volleyball, but I was struck at the time by this salvo directed by LeBron James towards arguably the most powerful man in the West. James had actively campaigned for Clinton in the election, and his views on Trump were well-known before this. It's important to remember that James and Steph Curry are not simply 'good players'; their footballing equivalents would be Neymar and Messi in the sense that not only are they at the top of their profession, they are making organisational, management-level interventions on a regular basis. We're doing the logical triple jump here, but James would be Wayne Rooney (best player), Jagielka (captain) Steve Walsh (Director of Football and overall footballing strategic direction) and a significant amount of Elstone's role all bundled in to one. It's a clumsy analogy, but here's an individual that not only effects the fortunes of their team in-game, but has unequivocally tied the entire organisation's colours to one political mast. Could you imagine that happening here? You've got whole teams kneeling during the national anthem before the start of American Rugby games, inspiring and alienating sections of their own fanbase in a definitive manner. But the net result is supporters are engaged on a far deeper level than simply watching them spend a couple of seasons jogging about in the jersey (yes I know jersey is not for the soccers but it works on a creative level here).
Then of course you've got the middle of the Venn Diagram - the Catalan independence referendum. Pique, a wonderful snide on the pitch, the subtle knife in the ribcage to Ramos's sledgehammer in the chops, was pictured above in a Catalan polling station. He could quite easily have uttered a few neutral remarks, stayed at home 'for his own safety' and backed the winning horse when the political situation is resolved. But there he us, dressed like a child who wet his kecks on the first day at school and that's all they had left in the office lost property, leading the way. And naturally, the Barcelona fans love him for it; there's that empathy, that link between gajillionaire footballer and common man, he's one of us, we support him and by extension, we support him and team. Add Drogba and his political influence in the Cote d'ivoire and you've got players who transcend their sport.
Bringing us back to Everton (or British Football in general)
I'm not hugely sold on Bolasie the footballer, but he comes across as a likable individual who probably stops and has a quick chat on a match day. He's got an expansive, interesting playing career at a variety of levels and strikes me as man with an opinion.
But the tweet above is indicative of the level of common man 'bantz' you get out of players. "You play FIFA? So do I! Well, they pay me a bit of money and I tweet about it. But we've got that in common, right????".
Who are these people? The only time they seem to deviate from the script is when a cyclist has been run over, a rent-a-scandal lady has been driven home, a fan has been punched for nicking a hat. Only negativity breaks the spell. When the U23s helped raise money for the house to help the homeless, wouldn't it have been fantastic if one person, even David Unsworth, had commented on how disgraceful it is that a wealthy city can no longer look after its own, that in modern society we still have people going hungry and sleeping rough, that it shouldn't have to resort to a football club (and the donations from ordinary working people) to make a welcome if drop-in-the-ocean intervention? But instead, the usual trope, 'don't know how lucky we are' / 'good to give something back' / 'good lesson for the youngsters' etc etc.
If you were asked for a list of ten Goodison icons from the glory days, high among them would be Peter Reid and Neville Southall. The latter is as hard left as possible, currently espousing skeletons for lampposts and pigs with lipstick (me neither). Reid has just been quoted tearing Boris Johnson a new one. We are interested in what they have to say, whether we agree with it or not, and that helps build the link. What do we have from the current lot? You could probably get the after match comments of Weir, Jagielka, Neville, Stubbs, Baines, remove the team names and you'd have a homogenised mess of oblique phrases, impossible to attribute to any one individual. They come in, they do their thing for a few years, leave not utterances of note, they pootle out the door. It's like the footballing equivalent of Westworld, minus the boobs and violence. Well, we've got Williams for the former I suppose. No real affinity - no real link with the fans - very difficult to muster any real feeling for any of them on a Saturday afternoon. Just once, I'd like one of them to give us a bit of insight, some link that we can all work with, even if we score a goal (haha) and all eleven players lie on the floor in front of the Street End and spell out '51.9% LOL' (I've tried this with eleven matchsticks this morning).
Should Everton players and politics mix? And would you feel a greater affinity for a player who shared your views?
I probably should have a poll here.
Great thread. I think you may have thrown something of a curveball at a few on this forum
For my 2 cents, I think celebrities and sports personalities have just as much right to talk about issues close to their heart as us regular folk and, in fact, I much prefer to see it than an athlete who pushes a carefully managed brand. But like those of us who harp on about our various opinions, prepare to be destroyed if it's an ill-thought out position that you haven't really researched. And scale that risk up by a factor of about a thousand if you are a person of note.
Roger Milla
Player Valuation: £20m
As long as they're not posting Tory filth propaganda I couldn't care less
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