Allardyce merely a product of English football, he was sacked after telling truth about rotten game
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Updated 29/09/2016 at 08:02 GMT
Sam Allardyce can explain how to circumvent official transfer rules with as much clarity as he can define the offside rule, but the sacked England manager is merely a product of a corrupt national sport, writes Desmond Kane.
Sam Allardyce faces the media a day after being sacked as England manager.
Image credit: Eurosport
Sam Allardyce was not always seduced by money.
When Big Sam was manager of unfashionable Blackpool in the old Second Division back in 1994, he was quick to point out the benefits of earning less to achieve more.
One recalls discussing Allardyce’s attributes with Phil Brown while he was running Hull City in the Premier League a few years back.
Brown, a manager who once infamously delivered a half-time team talk on the pitch during a 5-1 flogging at Manchester City, was such an admirer of Allardyce’s willingness to work for a pittance that he cited his wife Karen and Big Sam as the most important influences on his career.
"When Sam offered me the job at Blackpool, I had to take a 75 per cent cut in wages, because I was still a player,” said Brown. “I was a player, coaching the first team, taking the reserve team...and...it kept on going..
Sam said to me never underestimate your first offer. It gets you on the ladder. Money should not be the main motivator. Once I got on the ladder, it was the best bit of advice I had. Two years later, I was a Premier League coach under Sam at Bolton.
Such honesty from more innocent times in football one might suggest, but then you recall the Liverpool goalkeeper Bruce Grobbelaar match-fixing and the Arsenal manager George Graham collecting £425,000 from an agent for buying a couple of his players in 1992, and you realise that football has always been a vehicle for unsavoury characters on the make.
The rivers of filthy lucre running through football when Big Sam and Brown were operating in Blackpool back in 1994 is vastly different to 2016. Some will say to its eternal detriment.
As he stood on the doorstep of his Bolton home on Wednesday morning, Allardyce perhaps longed for simpler days, having lost his dream job only 10 weeks after being annointed.
Is it really fair to say the Dudley man's downfall was caused by his own greed? It is perhaps more appropriate to suggest he is merely a product of a sport that has failed to cull a culture of managers, directors, agents and God only knows who else earning extra on the side from the horse-trading of players.
He was wrong to get emotional the morning after the sacking before. In saying he was a victim of entrapment, the message seemed to be: "as long as nobody knows about it, who cares?"
Allardyce claimed he attended the fateful meeting with undercover reporters from the Daily Telegraph in August to help out a friend, an agent Scott McGarvey who he had known for over 30 years.
The idea behind the lager-laced dinner date was apparently to assist his mate in securing a job that carried a salary of £200,000-a-year and a company car. He claims it was not to earn extra dough on the side to bolster his £3m-a-year earnings as the highest paid national manager in the world game.
Whatever is suggested, Allardyce would not have been at the meeting without the prospect of extra dough. Yet who in their right mind would not have been interested in collecting £400,000 for a bit on the side if it was all above aboard? And Allardyce himself made clear he would need clearance from the FA. This was not a shady deal - it is just how football works.
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Former England national football team manager Sam Allardyce speaks to the press outside his home in Bolton on September 28, 2016.
Image credit: AFP
Allardyce has been described as a buffoon and a figure brought down by his own greed, but this is unfair comment and is missing the bigger picture.
When Allardyce spoke to strangers about the methods that can be used - again, quite legally - to get around strict Football Association rules on third-party ownership with as much comfort as explaining 4-3-2-1 to Wayne Rooney, he hinted at a murky world far away from football. Far away from fans.
At the age of 61, Allardyce should not have not known better if this is the only culture he has known. The problem for the FA goes well beyond the sacking of one manager whose moral compass may or may not be wonky.
To understand the sums involved in the modern era of the world game, it has emerged today that the Arsenal player Mesut Ozil is apparently keen to see his wage increase from £140,000-a-week to £200,000-a-week.
Is it little wonder with such inordinate sums involved that some figures in the game are out for a little taste of the pie.
Humans will always be seduced extra cash. The Daily Telegraph can really do football a favour if they can come up with real, conclusive proof of wrongdoing. Not merely a manager like Big Sam bumping his gums with a jag in him.
Managers who are willing to take bungs to sign players for clubs, who have more interest in getting their snouts in the trough, who are on the make for number one, should be named and shamed. And booted out of the game.
If there are eight of them, name them. As it stands, the Allardyce incident is merely embarrassing. Nothing more.
The FA have not solved their malady by sacking a manager. Allardyce’s dismissal is depressing and sad. Yet he has been bagged by a body who were accused by FIFA of cosying up to Jack Warner in their failed attempts to land the 2018 World Cup finals. Nobody should sound sanctimonious about Big Sam's demise.
Allardyce sounded grubby and unbefitting of an England manager on a secret camera video that would struggle to make Beyonce look good, but it should also be noted that he spoke honestly, acutely unaware that he was being fitted up.
You do wonder if Big Sam would have been able to offer such a sharp analysis necking what appeared to be a pint of lambrusco while he was Blackpool manager?
Allardyce let himself down, but the FA's problem stretches much further than finding one scapegoat for a scourge of the national game.
Whether or not it was an "error in judgement" as he said, Allardyce was sacked after enjoying some grub, a pint of weak lager and speaking the truth.
Desmond Kane
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