Gluttony rules in the English Premier League: Richard Buxton
While the world struggles with the coronavirus, clubs like Tottenham have made non-playing staff take a pay cut
Even in the midst of a global pandemic, football is refusing to get a grip on reality.
A combination of denial and delusion sees the elite-level game scrambling to retain its bloated sense of self-interest while the world continues to battle against the spread of the coronavirus.
The English Premier League remains committed to completing the 2019/20 season at any cost other than to their own deep pockets. Resuming the campaign behind closed doors is considered preferable to taking a £1.2 billion (S$2.14b) hit in broadcasting revenues.
Gluttony reigns supreme in the self-proclaimed greatest league in the world.
No fewer than four top-flight clubs have already taken advantage of the British government's new job retention scheme set up to deal with the fallout from the coronavirus. Others are expected to follow suit.
Tottenham Hotspur's decision to furlough 550 non-playing employees on a 20 per cent wage cut - on the same day it was revealed that chairman Daniel Levy had pocketed a £3 million bonus on top of his annual £4m salary - was another slap in the face at a time of unprecedented crisis.
Levy's ruthlessness has become notorious within the game. Dinamo Zagreb learned that the hard way after requesting five Spurs shirts as a token of goodwill in Luka Modric's 2008 sale.
Levy obliged but deducted the cost from the player's £16.5m transfer fee.
Mauricio Pochettino, too, discovered the sheer brutality of his former paymaster. Not content with making the Argentine soldier through an entire season without making a single signing, Levy axed him and appointed Jose Mourinho as his replacement in a matter of hours.
Squeezing every penny is a hallmark of the 58-year-old's business career.
It is why his personal fortune reportedly rivals the cost of the Lilywhites' shiny new £1b home, while Joe Lewis, Levy's superior in the north Londoners' chain of command, is valued at around US$4.8b (S$6.9b).
But the streets around the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium are hardly paved with gold. World football's eighth-richest club still resides in one of England's most economically deprived areas.
MOCKERY
Not only does it make a mockery of Levy's rallying cry for the global game to "wake up to the enormity of what is happening around us", but also the perception that Spurs are a club that believes in doing things the right way.
Their latest actions could not have been more wrong.
Most of their staff who have suffered wage reductions do not have the luxury of working from lavish homes like the club's entire playing squad, nor the resources to donate dozens of electronic tablets to local healthcare facilities, as defender Toby Alderweireld recently did.
The vast majority are forced to live hand-to-mouth. Unlike Levy, their bottom line is the difference between survival and struggle. Wealth does not even come into the equation.
Bournemouth's Eddie Howe has attempted to lead by example in becoming the first EPL manager to voluntarily take a pay cut, while his club have pledged to top up any loss of earnings their staff incur from being furloughed due to the coronavirus outbreak.
Yet the rest of the English football continues to fixate on its own uncompromising agenda.
Howe and Alderweireld's acts of benevolence are a drop in the ocean, compared to the ongoing stand-off between the English game's authorities and the Professional Footballers' Association, who have ordered its members not to agree to any wage deferrals or pay cuts.
That position is unlikely to change when the relevant parties are due to meet again today.
A succession of hare-brained schemes to see out the 2019/20 campaign in its entirety are actively being mooted.
Fulfilling a litany of broadcast commitments, it seems, is still deemed far more important than preserving the health and well-being of the wider population.
The sooner football finally accepts its limitations and stops putting lives at risk, the better.
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