The World We Blog

Wow, in all these years I have not really managed to infect my computer with any malicious malware/virus’… until last night that is. Not sure how or what it was that I downloaded, but I managed to unwittingly infect my master boot record with the Rootkit.Win32.TDSS family of malware. This managed to cause my system to crash, and then refused to reboot. Each time it would go to system recovery, and then fail to recover from the error. Upon further investigation, I was not even able to access my local hard drives from command prompt, and it was telling me that my system drive was actually X:\. When I checked the error report generated when Windows tried to fix itself, it was telling me that the file C:\Windows\Syetem32\ci.dll was corrupt.
Luckily, as all good IT professionals should, I have access to my laptop as well, and a quick search for the infected file name gave me the answer. I came across a Microsoft Answers entry entitled boot critical file C:\CI.dll is corrupt. This was my saviour, and told me exactly what had happened. It even gave me a handy link to a Kaspersky tool for removing the Rootkit.Win32.TDSS malware.
A quick disassembly of my desktop later and my hard drive had been removed and inserted into a handy hard drive enclosure (everyone should have one of these!). This enabled me to access the drive without booting from it, and I was therefore able to run the rootkit scan on the drive using the above tool.
The whole process took me less than thirty minutes, however it was definitely a hassle I could have done without in this heat. It was definitely a lesson learned however. I will be even more careful what files I download and what sources I trust in the future. A word of warning to the wise, piracy always brings risks with it!

I was reading an article (It’s not Bosman’s fault, It is pure greed) written by a University friend of mine, and although in principle I disagree with footballers high wages, I cannot accept the perception of them being money grabbing profiteers. We have caused this after all.

In the article he states that modern players “aren’t loyal to their clubs anymore, barring a few exceptions”, insinuating that they once were and would stick with a club for their entire career. While it was certainly more common in the bygone era, this is stated as if the surge of money into professional footbal in recent years has caused this. You only have to look at some previous greats to realise this is not the case however.

The baby face of the England 1966 World Cup winning side, Alan Ball, was only 21 when he first played for the three lions. He went on to spend 22 years playing the beautiful game, and in those 22 years he turned out for 13 separate teams. During his prime he would stay at a club just 5 years on average before moving on. Compare this with a modern day footballer, and you will find a fairly similar rate at which they feel the need for a change. Cristiano Ronaldo for example spent 6 years at Manchester Utd, Luis Figo spent 5 years each at Barcelona, Real Madrid and Inter Milan, and David Beckham has spent similar amounts of time with Real Madrid and LA Galaxy. Even looking at Peter Shilton, who holds the record for appearances made in an England shirt, he amassed 11 different clubs during his vast 30 year career. Again, during his peak he tended to only spend an average of 5 years at any club. So this idea of players being less loyal in the current era of football is nonsense. Players have been transferring at fairly regular intervals through football.

I do not believe this is due to them being disloyal to either the football club or the fans who turn out to support. This is more just a sign of players wanting to progress, wanting a change of scenery and wanting to try something different. We all become bored with life when it becomes similar and almost routine. The same happens in any job, and here is the major point which I feel people forget; footballers are just doing their job. It is a very well paid job, and a job which they should in theory love, but it is a job all the same. In all walks of life, people get bored of their job, want to move away to a different location, want to better themselves and increase their wage. Footballers in this respect are no different.

Coming back to footballer’s wages however, there has been a drastic increase in the last 10-15 years, and it has been widely documented. The cause of this increase has not been purely fuelled by footballers greed, but instead by the HUGE increase in television monies afford to the clubs since the creation of the Premier League. With the creation of the Premier League came larger TV revenue for the clubs from companies such as Sky, Setanta, ESPN etc. Seeing your company suddenly turn over a huge profit will always turn employees heads, as they will feel they are entitled to a proportion of those profits as it was their efforts which helped generate them. Now this is not necessarily the case in the beginning, but because the amounts have increased as opposed to staying static, these could be seen as a result of their performance.
If you saw your companies revenue and profits increase, and they were dictated mainly by your performances on the pitch, would you not feel that you deserved a larger proportion of that money? Of course you would, and this is exactly the same for footballers. With the increase in revenue however, also came an increase in expectation of them. Footballers are no longer just expected to be skilful with the ball at their feet, but also be Olympic sprinters, and all-round athletes. With the extra money comes extra demand on the players, and the schedule increases to fit more and more matches in. Your average footballer will now be expected to play 40+ games a season, and at their peak fitness levels. This is not even including international matches if they are involved in those. This is a big ask for these players, and leaves very little downtime between matches to rest and recover. In many ways therefore, they are required to be fitter than Olympic athletes! Add to this the public expectation and media spotlight on them 24/7, and there is little room for error on or off the pitch.

Obviously all this traiing and football leaves very little time for them to negotiate a new deal that is both fair and proportionate to their efforts on and off the pitch. This is generally where agents came in, however their roles in recent years have become twisted and they are now often overlooked in the whole episode of footballers wages.

The agent will act as the mediator between club officials and the player. This completely separates the playing side from the money side, and is a good thing for the performance of the player as they don’t need to worry so much when disagreements arise. However, it also leaves these ruthless agents in charge of financial negotiations, and this can never be a good thing. Agents are paid a large amount as part of any transfer or contract negation that goes ahead. They will also very likely be getting paid a monthly fee by the players they represent as they handle all aspects of them from image rights to media appearances and what they say goes. They are the public relations manager for those players under them and their job role is simple, do the best for that player as they can. This includes doing the best they can for themselves, inevitably. It is this ruthless drive of the agents, combined with the increase in football revenues which has seen football wages soar to the heights we currently see.