I think the best way to get your head around the current wave of pan-European protests about football ticket prices is to first view the phenomenon of ‘the Testimonial Match’. To put things in their correct perspective.

This is what happened; back in the day.

Kids would leave school at 14, they were grubby, grimy, smoked like chimneys and fairly dim. They would either go to work down the pit, for £1, 2s and 3d a week, or, if they were so inclined, they’d go and play for Liverpool, for £1, 2s and 9d a week. That was sixpence more every bloody week!!!. I’ll take it; where do I sign.

And these would be Billys and Bobbys and Nobbys Alfies and Johnnys. We’re a long way off from having a Yaya or a Mousa or a Wolfgang in the top flight of football. Long way off.

After 20 years of physical abuse on knees, groins and hamstrings, they’d ‘retire’. Ah, but I’m only 32. I’m uneducated, half-crippled, no work experience, never, and I can’t even speak proper. Wharr’am I gonna do???? At least for the next 14 years when the resultant concussions from 2 decades of heading a 15 kilo ball made of concrete takes its toll and renders me either completely stupid or completely dead? Wharr’am I gonna do?? Ain’t got no money.

Ahhh, we’ll give you a ‘testimonial’, say the clubs. We’ll play an exhibition match and all the fans will turn up to wave you goodbye AND you get to keep the entire game receipts as a little nest-egg. Now how does that sound, Billy/Nobby/Jimmy???

And thus they’d raise £22,462.94, which would represent the player’s entire retirement fund. But it was enough to buy a pub. Which was all they ever wanted to do. Job done. It was basically ‘a whip round’ by the fans to give something to the retiring player.

Someone was telling me how, a few years back, some magnanimous Premiership superstar donated his ‘testimonial money’, about 500 grand, ‘to charity’. Ahhhhh, what a mensch. No, what a disgustingly overpaid no-goodnik who sees half a mil as ‘pocket change’ and a tax liability. And furthermore, the concept of a ‘whip round’ to benefit someone who earns (in their playing days) 400 times per year what the average man on the street does, is somewhat anachronistic. To say the least.

And that, basically, is the nature of the problem. Clubs pay such outrageous salaries to players and its funded by people earning less than a tenth in a year what the players do in a week.

So Liverpool are putting up the price of some tickets to 77 quid, so they all walked out of Saturday’s game on the 77th minute. If they’d have had the sense to convert the money to Euros they could have stayed til the 98th minute and enjoyed their side conceding the late goal which robbed them of a win. The American fans at the Superbowl didn’t all walk out in the 14,000th minute in protest at their outrageous ticket pricing. But they’re Yanks so they don’t count.

Crystal Palace fans are bemoaning the same thing. Increased ticket prices; decreased enjoyment. Dusseldorf fans too. And Germans pay about 20 quid to see a Bundesliga match.

The fans fund the players. Excessively and ridiculously. Wayne Rooney earns more than Rooney Mara. More than Jennifer Lawrence. They should have become football players when they had the chance.

Cap player salaries. Its the only way. THEY EARN ENOUGH, FOR GOD’S SAKE.

Happy Wednesday

A xxx