Money Money Everywhere – Accept At Grassroots!

It happens every year doesn’t it? In fact it happens so often now-a-days that a lot of people are no longer surprised and disgust is often the sentiment that is shown!

I am, of course, referring to the amount of money splashed about by the Premier League clubs during the transfer window!

It’s quite staggering to see the figures, I saw one on the BBC that suggested £1.25 billion had been spent – truly phenomenal! Paul Pogba alone was £80 million! Is any player really worth those kind of figures, sure you get truly gifted players that can make a season, but £80 million!

In amongst all this money is, what was once referred to as, the people’s game and it’s been kind of interesting to see areas of backlash against the sums that have been mentioned above.

One well established independent football website formulated that just 1% of the estimated £1.25 billion would be enough to keep a non-league club in business for over 30 years, whilst it could keep a junior club going almost indefinitely!

Of course the calls for a percentage of the money spent to be funnelled into grassroots football, be it junior, facilities at sports clubs or helping clubs out at non-league level have been active again, but looking around, it does seem that these calls are more vociferous than before, which does lead one to wonder if the support for grassroots/non-league football is getting a lot more attention than before.

Personally I believe that they are right, we need to look after the juniors and the facilities around the country. Too many clubs are having to fold and too many facilities are going to pot. It’s only fair that the clubs at the top should start really investing in the bottom tiers, after all, the next superstar may just be learning to kick a ball now and would the big clubs really miss 1% of a transfer fee? I think not!