Filed under: Newcastle, Premier League, Football
For rather too long than we care to remember now, Shola Ameobi, decent bloke though he may be, has been a walking, or perhaps that should be limping, embodiment of what many feel is wrong with footballers in the Premier League era.Not that we're at all jealous of course, but after having the good fortune to be a professional for more than a decade at a time when salaries at the top end of the game are at their most obscene, Ameobi is a millionaire, several times over.
Good luck to him. The Newcastle forward is hardly going to turn it down if he's offered shed-loads of money for the far from onerous task of kicking a ball around, is he?
But it would be interesting if he, and dozens of other Premier League footballers, just took a moment to step back from it all and ask themselves what have they actually achieved for all their millions, the flash cars and impressive pad in that exclusive neighbourhood?
Ameobi has managed only 179 starts - with almost as many from the bench - in a career that stretches for almost 11 years now. He's not the only one of his peers who has succumbed to injury far too easily, the play one miss four generation as we might call them. You know, the Kieron Dyers of this world, footballing passengers whose rate of pay per minute on the pitch just isn't worth contemplating. The words daylight and robbery spring to mind.
Perhaps it's unfair to single out Ameobi, who turns 30 this year and is just one of a crop of players in recent times who've earned handsome amounts for doing really very little. And perhaps it's also wrong to concentrate on the adopted Geordie because he has this week finally shown that he is willing to put himself and his body on the line in return for his ridiculous remuneration.
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Source: http://www.fanhouse.co.uk/2011/03/08/Premier-league-football-shola-ameobi-newcastle-united/
Thomaz Bellucci Tim Clark Tomas Berdych Torsten Frings Vicente
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