Wage of innocence

As many of you who follow football will know, this year is the 50th anniversary of arguably the most important development in the game, since it was introduced over 100 years ago.

Until 18 January 1961 the maximum wage for players was £20 a week, and they were effectively slave labour for the owners, as one player at the time described it. Fast forward 50 years and, with the help of two decades of Rupert Murdoch’s money, leading players are earning between £100k and £200k a week. Depending what era you were born in you may yearn for the days when players like Stanley Matthews went to matches on the bus, or you could still have a drink with Jimmy Greaves in the pub after a Spurs match. Nowadays you only meet players in a nightclub or if you are Neil Bridge and l...