The older I get, the more I dislike people using someone else’s hardship to sell themselves.
Maybe that makes me old-fashioned.
Fine.
I’ll take that.
This week I saw another post about a footballer going bankrupt.
The formula is always the same.
Take a famous player.
Take the worst moment of his life.
Turn it into a headline.
Then use it to sell a lesson.
He earned £50,000 a week.
Now he is bankrupt.
He won everything.
Now he has nothing.
He had the world.
Now look at him.
Then comes the pitch.
This is why you need better financial planning.
This is why players need advice.
This is why young athletes need educating.
This is why people like me matter.
Maybe they do.
But there is a difference between helping people and using people.
There is a difference between education and exploitation.
There is a difference between saying, “this problem matters,” and turning another man’s hardship into a sales funnel.
That is the bit I do not like.
Maybe it works in the corporate world.
Maybe it works on LinkedIn.
Maybe this is how people build personal brands now.
But it does not sit right with me.
In my world, when someone is struggling, you help them up.
You do not stand on their shoulders so you can be seen from further away.
Footballers are easy targets.
People see the wages and lose all empathy.
They see the cars.
They see the houses.
They see the medals.
They see the Instagram pictures.
So when it goes wrong, part of the public almost enjoys it.
Good.
Serves him right.
How can you earn that much and lose it?
I would never be that stupid.
That last sentence is usually the giveaway.
Because people love judging other people’s disasters from the safety of a life that has not yet tested them properly.
Football gives young players money, status and pressure before it gives them wisdom, protection or peace.
Most players become wealthy before they become fully grown men.
They are teenagers when the machine finds them.
They are praised, watched, chased, flattered and sold dreams.
Agents appear.
Advisers appear.
Friends appear.
Business opportunities appear.
Family pressures appear.
Old mates appear.
New mates appear.
People with nice watches and sharper teeth appear.
Then years later, when something goes wrong, we all sit there pretending the answer was obvious.
Get a better financial planner.
As if that solves every pressure.
As if a spreadsheet can explain a life.
As if a man’s downfall can be reverse-engineered into a LinkedIn carousel.
Over the years, I have been lucky enough to spend time around football.
Not as a journalist looking for headlines.
Not as a social media expert looking for engagement.
Just as a bloke involved in the game.
Some of the names used in these articles are not strangers to me.
I met Wes Brown, David James and Lee Hendrie through the Hong Kong Sevens. I sponsored Eric Djemba-Djemba wearing Stylo Matchmakers boots at Kanu’s charity testimonial. Colin Hendry was my hero growing up; years later, I ended up having coffee with him and we still speak on WhatsApp. Trevor Sinclair lives locally. I see him from time to time.
I am not writing this to expose anyone.
I am writing it because some of the players whose names get thrown around in these bankruptcy articles are people I have actually met.
That changes how you see it.
You stop seeing a headline.
You see a human being.
A father.
A husband.
A former teammate.
A person carrying pressures most of us know nothing about.
That is what social media strips away.
Distance creates certainty.
The further away people are from the story, the more confident they become.
A footballer goes bankrupt and suddenly everyone becomes an expert.
Yet none of them were there.
Nobody knows what really went on.
You do not know who he was supporting.
You do not know who he trusted.
You do not know what advice he received.
You do not know what business deals failed.
You do not know what family pressures existed.
You do not know what happened behind closed doors.
You only know the part that became public.
That should make people more humble.
Instead, it seems to make them more confident.
That is what bothers me.
The certainty.
The smugness.
The clean little moral lesson built from another person’s mess.
I am not saying financial education does not matter.
It does.
Players should understand money.
Clubs should prepare young lads for the real world.
Academies should teach tax, contracts, investments, risk, family pressure, lending money, saying no and spotting people who want a piece of them.
That conversation matters.
But if the only time you talk about it is when a footballer goes bankrupt, ask yourself why.
If the player’s name is the hook, his hardship is the product.
And if the post ends by pointing people towards your service, let us not pretend this is purely about care.
It is marketing.
Maybe polished marketing.
Maybe well-intentioned marketing.
But marketing all the same.
Maybe this also forces a bigger question.
What is money actually for?
Football talks about money as if it is the final score of a life.
Wages.
Net worth.
Contracts.
Cars.
Houses.
Endorsements.
But then you look at Lou Macari.
He did not build his legacy through a balance sheet.
He built it by helping people who had nowhere to go.
He gave homeless people shelter, dignity and hope.
And I am genuinely pleased to see him getting recognition for that.
Not because of what he earned.
Not because of what he owned.
But because of what he built.
Long after the wages, the cars and the headlines are forgotten, Lou Macari will be remembered for helping people who needed him.
That strikes me as a better measure of success than a net-worth statement.
Maybe the richest man in football is not the one with the biggest contract.
Maybe it is the one who can sleep at night knowing his life meant something to people who needed him.
A man can lose money and still have character.
A man can have millions and be spiritually bankrupt.
Football needs better financial education.
Of course it does.
But it also needs better moral education.
Because if the only thing we teach young players is how to protect money, we have missed the bigger lesson.
Money should protect your life.
It should not become the meaning of it.
People are not content.
Pain is not a pitch.
And if your brand needs another man’s hardship to stand taller, maybe your brand is not standing on much.