Are World Cup stars playing for their countries or contracts?

Date Published: {J}

The World Cup should be a celebration of all that is best in football, with the top players on the planet showing what they’re made of to compete for the ultimate prize.

And it is that in many ways – but equally, the two abiding memories of South Africa 2010 so far concern petulant superstars and the perpetual sound of buzzing bees.

The vuvuzelas are best put down to some obscure aspect of African culture – although a good solicitor would still manage to conjure up a class action for tinnitus that would put the army deafness bill in the ha’penny place.

The petulance, on the other hand, is not so easily explained; as in, what entitles players – who earn more in a week than two of the travelling fans do in a year –to slag off their right to criticise their performances?

And those performances are eminently slaggable alright – fellas on small fortunes who spend more time arguing with each other, the manager, the media and the fans than ensuring their team’s safe passage through the group stages.

Which begs the question – what is the main motivation for these closeted superstars?

Or in other words, are players more interested in putting themselves in the shop window to get a better contract or a moneybags transfer than playing as a team to win the ultimate prize?

And those who came into the World Cup with little hope of advancing past the group stages and with players who would be happy to eek out a living in the lower regions of the league – New Zealand, as a case in hand – have enjoyed results that have taken everyone by surprise.

Might that explain why some of the lesser lights have enjoyed the more impressive results to date while the big guns – Spain, for example, with an entire team of superstars up for sale to the highest bidder or England, where transfer talk is far more prominent than tactics – struggle to show a united front.

Are they playing for the benefit of the Man City Arabs, the Chelsea Russians or their nation – or in the case of the North Koreans, for the chance to make a run for it?

Every half-wit who has a shot on target is linked with a big money move to somewhere in Europe, and it’s hard for these money driven professionals not to have their heads turned by the notion of a multi-million euro signing on fee.

Club managers must be secretly praying their stars have a nightmare – where, for example, is the queue forming for the goalkeeping services of Robert Greene or the goalscoring talents of Emile Heskey?

The greatest strength that Ireland had under Jack Charlton was that the team was greater than the sum of its parts, and players who were struggling to make an impact at club level were playing like superstars because Big Jack had a system.

What England wouldn’t give at the minute for a similarly authoritarian manager because Capello, for all of his hardman reputation, insists on playing players out of position just to ensure that the country’s highest profile eleven players are on the starting team-sheet.

For more, read this week's Connacht Tribune.