Carlos Tevez and the modern footballer’s bubble.

Exactly What Carlos Tevez actually refused to do in Munich is still up for debate. The player is now claiming he declined a request to warm up after having just done so, with Roberto Mancini and several senior club officials insisting he refused to play.

Whichever request was denied, the arrogant and petulant nature in which he defied his manager is symptomatic of modern day, higher-earning footballers’ almost complete removal from reality. It shows the contempt that many well paid players have for some of the basic structures of society, like chain of command, cause and effect and mutual respect. You or I would think twice about flagrantly ignoring a reasonable request at our place of work because we are acutely aware of these intrinsic principles. 

The mind-set of players like Tevez is completely different.  Having been paid vast sums of money from a young age and constantly pandered to by club officials and agents, they seem to have a significantly underdeveloped sense of responsibility in relation to their profession. When he was asked to play, or warm up again, by Mancini it is irrelevant whether or not he wanted to. He had a responsibility to himself, his employers, his manager and the fans to carry out that request because it is what he is paid to do.

It is a depressing and bizarre aspect of the modern game that so many top flight players are so far removed from their fellow man on the terraces. This forms a large part of the reason fans are so quick to turn on a player when he is going through a bad patch on or off the pitch. The greatest and most important distinction is financial, why should they have sympathy for someone who gets five times their yearly salary in a week? It is human nature to afford the ludicrously well-paid less margin for error, the public anger towards former RBS chief executive Fred Goodwin is testament to that.

Whether he is fined, sacked, suspended or sent to the moon, the feeling of his disdain towards the club and its fans will linger and that’s the problem. Every time a high profile player shows this kind of contempt for the game and the fans, it opens ever wider the chasm of empathy between supporter and footballer to the benefit of neither.