Footballers are indeed massively pampered, and the player power that came as result of the Bosman ruling did bring with it some negative features that have never been totally resolved (the rise of agents, for example).
However, I will disagree with you on one point - footballers are not stress free. They do feel intense pressure and stress, especially when they are young and trying to build their careers. Remember also that most foobtallers have a pretty weak education - for many the game is almost the only thing they know. Europeans criticize the American system of bringing players through college because they are nearly 22-24 when they graduate -and thus 4-5 years behind Euro players in development. But at least that gives them a better chance of finding a useful job once they are too old to play.
Are they pampered and entitled? Oh yes, absolutely. But being a foobtaller is a real pressure cooker environment. Though I agree with you that, apart from coaching and punditry, most elite fooballers retire with virtually no job skills and since they tend to be spendthrift during their careers, it's not uncommon for them to find themselves bankrupt and unemployable in their mid 30s.
I agree on the pressure and stress put on footballers.
Those that we see in the telly (even when they're just sitting on the bench or not even there) spent quite literally their complete youth and large parts of their childhood "playing" soccer. Nonstop. And that means training after training after training. One single injury and it's probably over with your career before it really started. They do earn pretty early on nowadays but they invest an unbelievable amount of time and dedication - at least in Germany there was a shift regarding the education / job aspect for those teenagers, but I can't comment on how successful that works at the very bottom tier.
I will also add, and that goes for almost all the "celebrities", that there is a kind of pressure and stress involved being that exposed to the public eye (huge part of why they earn so much too of course) that I personally can't fully imagine.
Excellent and thoughtful posts,
@Lord Blackadder and
@twietee, and I fully appreciate the fact that most footballers are extraordinarily uneducated, as is clear from the very small number of players that managed to acquire a university degree (Kevin Moran, Graeme Le Saux, Steve Coppell - all from another era - come to mind, as does the astonishingly gifted polymath from Brazil, the wonderful Dr Socrates; a more recent example - and a stark and striking contrast to Adam Johnson is the case of Duncan Watmore - also from the Sunderland stable - who obtained a first class honours degree; but this is very much the exception, not the rule).
However, on the issue of stress - yes, agreed, there are the stressors of the celebrity lifestyle (for immature young men who haven't fully grown into knowing who they are themselves), - and the stress imposed by having to perform, but ordinary people have stress, too.
But footballers are not the only individuals who face stress. Unlike many others, they tend to get excused their excesses. Unemployment is extremely stressful, as is caring for someone with say, autism, or dementia. A relentless unending stress.
On income and stress, for example, the Prime Ministers of most of the EU countries will not earn much more than €200,000 p.a. - yet someone such as Mr Johnson, late of Sunderland, pockets - or used to pocket until he was fired recently - a salary that clocked in at £60,000 per week.
Agree completely that it is nothing like as cosy in lower divisions where the players are more likely to be somewhat - rather than obscenely - better off than the people in whose midst they live, and to be a lot more rooted in their local communities as a consequence.
Indeed, this is one of the reasons I like Leicester so much: Their genuinely gracious attitude, which is entirely lacking in a sense of entitled, pampered arrogance, is an absolute breath of fresh air in the rarefied atmosphere at the top of the Premiership.
Needless to say, of course, the wealthy football clubs could do an awful lot more for the players that don't make the cut, - by helping them prepare for 'real life' - as well as for those who do make the cut and may need considerable help adjusting to the less pampered life of a player post playing days. And they could help the kids in their academies a lot more, not least by assisting them to obtain genuine qualifications in areas other than football.
My sense is that some of the northern European continental clubs (I am thinking of clubs in Germany, the Netherlands and so on) have a far better record in this regard.
