305: Winston Bogarde, Nederland, Panini World Cup France 98

Emlyn Jones takes a look today at a man who has become synonymous with all the financial issues with modern football. It’s easy to jump on your phone and slag footballers off for trousering vast sums of money but, as Emlyn notes, would you honestly turn down the offer of doing your current job for double the money elsewhere? On that note if there are any potential employers reading this I’d also like a house and car bonus and a relegation release clause. You’ll be pleased to hear that I’ll pass on the demands to be clapped out of my classroom on the last day of term after 26 minutes of Period 5. Over to Emlyn.

A few years ago, I got into a long, circular conversation in an Exeter pub about loyalty in professional football. There are plenty of players who have spent their whole career at a club, and won plenty while doing it; Tony Adams, Ryan Giggs and Steven Gerrard all had great success without ever moving clubs. Others have seemingly had a new club every other week; Nicolas Anelka and Craig Bellamy spring immediately to mind.

I'll be brutally honest, in my current job, if I was offered a pay rise and a whacking great signing on fee to switch companies, I'd have pinged off my notice and be dropping hints about contacting clients before you could say "gardening leave". This wouldn't be any different in a hypothetical professional sporting career; in a perfect world (in which I am not atrocious at football), I'd have debuted for Reading and taken them to victory in every competition going over a glittering career, being paid a frighteningly exorbitant sum in the process. In reality, when I'd have been breaking through, Reading would have offered £1,500 a week tops as they struggled to avoid dropping into the third tier again. If Preston North End or someone had offered me £2,500 it would have been goodbye Berkshire, hello Deepdale Shopping Park.

Footballers who do this are branded mercenaries, but to be fair, becoming a professional footballer involves sacrifices and schoolwork may not be a priority, limiting options after the game. Furthermore, your career can be ended in a second, so making as much money as you can in the limited time shouldn't be sneered at. The flip side of this is why anyone would willingly take a pay cut, which brings me on to Winston Bogarde.

Bogarde started his career with SVV before moving on to Sparta Rotterdam and then Ajax Amsterdam, where he became a regular, and also debuted for the Netherlands national team. A brief stay with AC Milan was followed by a move to Barcelona, where he stayed for two seasons. Aged 29, and with compatriot Louis van Gaal having left his role as Barcelona coach, Bogarde moved to Chelsea in 2000. However, manager Gianluca Vialli was sacked a week after his signing, and it became rapidly clear that new boss Claudio Ranieri didn't rate the defender, as he played only eleven games, with the match against Ipswich Town on Boxing Day 2000 marking what would be his last game for almost two years.

Reportedly, Chelsea sought to sell Bogarde, or loan him out; however clubs balked at his reported £40,000 a week wages. Rather than take a pay cut to move, Bogarde decided simply to turn up to training and pick up his not insubstantial wages; in four seasons, he pocketed over £10m. He played one more game, in November 2002, before his contract expired in summer 2004. He was quoted in the press as saying "At the moment I signed it was in fact my money, my contract".

Chelsea's hierarchy attempted to force the issue by demoting Bogarde to the reserve team to train, and then the youth team, however he pointed out: "When you are offered those millions you take them. Few people will ever earn so many. I am one of the few fortunates who do".

Bogarde wasn't alone in viewing the game as his occupation and nothing more. He's the extreme article people point to in reference, however it's been echoed over the past couple of years with Gareth Bale's turbulent time at Real Madrid prior to returning to Tottenham Hotspur on loan. Wales, Golf, Sitting On The Bench Pretending A Roll Of Medical Tape Is A Pair Of Binoculars While Picking Up Massive Wages, Madrid. In that order. And I really can't blame him.