I have just been enjoying quite a slow, leisurely morning: a much-needed shave and shower, followed by a hearty bacon sandwich. As usual, I had the TV news on in the background though, and I just caught something which struck me as utterly, utterly absurd. Amid all the doom and gloom about soaring inflation, poorly paid public sector workers and the Tories trying to block the right to strike, the sports bulletin was topped by the bewildering news that “Chelsea have signed Benfica’s Argentina midfielder Enzo Fernandez for a British record 121m euro (£107m) transfer fee.” To be honest when I heard that my jaw hit the floor and I felt instantly enraged. At a time when our teachers and nurses are struggling to get paid properly, how is it acceptable that one football club can pay another football club a significant proportion of a billion quid, simply so that a player can stop playing in one team and play in another? At the end of the day, all these men do is kick balls around pitches; they don’t construct buildings, care for anyone’s health or drive busses. Society could function perfectly well without them, so how on earth is it justifiable that they should be ‘bought’ and ‘sold’ as if they are as valuable as hospitals or schools? I vaguely remember taking this up with my PA Bill about seventeen years ago. Bill was a football coach with a background in this area. He seemed to think it was perfectly justifiable, and that football players deserved the sums they were paid because they were supposedly elite. Yet the situation has become even more obscene since then: at a time when so many people are suffering through lack of money and having to fight to be paid a decent wage, football clubs are throwing around cash like it’s confetti, or numbers on pieces of paper with no real meaning. How can we as a society put up with this?