By Ahmed Wafi Rashid
For Ross McCormack. ‘I’ve never heard of him!’ Obviously, most of you haven’t. So who is Ross McCormack?
Ross McCormack is a Scottish footballer who currently plays his trade in central London for Fulham Football Club and was relegated from the Premier League last season. He is now looking for a quick bounce back to the big league which is probably one of the reasons why the football club would spend that much money on a player such as him.
What makes McCormack so special is firstly, spotting him on the pitch is fairly simple as he wears his trademark number 44 shirt at just about every club he plays in and even has the number tattooed on his arm. He stands at 175cm tall and has a slightly bulky frame which some might mistake for a few pints at the local pub.
His dribbling ability is admirable, a relatively quick player, a good eye for goal and exceptional finishing in front of goal which was proven last season in the Sky bet Championship in which he scored 28 league goals and 29 in all competitions for Leeds United.
What is slightly peculiar about this transfer is that although McCormack is an all out good player, he’s reaching the peak of his football career and at the ripe age of 28, there’s no telling how long more can he can stay at the peak.
Most strikers would be lucky to keep bagging 15-20 goals at the age of 32 and only time will tell whether or not McCormack will be in that list and even if he does, would £11 million justify four successful seasons? Apart from that, the transfer from Leeds United shocked many football fans around the world mainly because of the sum of money involved but Leeds won’t be too worried about that.
Leeds signed McCormack from Cardiff city at the beginning of the 2010/11 season for a reported fee of £400,000 but failed to make an immediate impact in his debut season with the Yorkshire club. In fact, many fans were beginning to doubt his talents when he missed a clear cut chance in the dying stages of a match against Middleborough that could have gifted Leeds all three points in one of the most dramatic fashions.
He ended that campaign with only two goals from twenty games. To be fair to him, most of his appearances that season came off the bench. But the following season, he scored 19 goals and Leeds fans all around the world were getting his name and number on the back of their replica kits.
Another reason why football pundits were baffled with the price tag was because the Scotsman is only proven in the second tier of English football and has never, not even for a second played in the top flight of English football! But to be fair, he has played EPL oppositions such as Arsenal, Tottenham and Chelsea during his time at Leeds and performed exceptionally well and even managed to grab the winning goal when Tottenham Hotspur visited Leeds.
But you really can’t blame him for making the move away from Leeds. Although I, myself felt slightly bitter when I was hit with the news but if you look at it from his perspective, it was an offer you couldn’t refuse. He was unhappy at Leeds, the owner was unhappy with him, the coach didn’t want to keep him and he was tempted by the chance to live in London, a handsome wage and a relatively higher chance of getting back into the big time. And Leeds were offered £11 million for a player who didn’t want to play for the club. Easy choice if you ask me.
The point of this article is to highlight the massive amount of money being paid for a player who is not even playing in the Premier League! And this simply goes to show that the amount of money revolving around the world of football is just too much, some might even say it’s ridiculous.
When clubs buy players from other clubs, it’s really a gamble, you don’t necessarily get what you pay for. We will take McCormack as an example. Fulham’s swoop for the Scotsman in the summer transfer window is turning out to be a flop because when you invest that much money, you don’t expect to be sitting at the foot of the table without a single league win regardless of how early it is in the season!
But then again, Leeds managed to secure his services for less that £1 million and he was scoring goals whenever he felt like it! Is McCormack worth £11 million? Certainly not.
A better known example is Andy Carroll, a big tall centre forward who Liverpool bought for £30 million and left after only three seasons for half the price with just 58 appearances and 11 goals to show for it.
The list of football flops goes on and on, the question is should footballers really be paid that much for our entertainment? Football fans around the world (myself included) might think so. I just hope that some of the money revolving around football will be used for the upbringing of society and for those who are more in need.
India spent $63 million for a space mission to the moon and Manchester United spends £140 million and aren’t even in the top five? Surely there must be something wrong.
Photo taken from International Business Times