Cristiano Ronaldo and Sepp Blatter's Looney Tunes Duet

United’s problem is, of course, merely the most widely-discussed case in an epidemic of threatened departures afflicting the top clubs in the Premier League. Suddenly, for this country’s football public, the uplifting experience of Euro 2008 has been supplanted by a familiarly dispiriting swirl of player agitation, providing the usual evidence of greed and blinkered, self-serving attitudes.

Emmanuel Adebayor and Alexander Hleb are sourly intent on leaving Arsenal, and Frank Lampard, notwithstanding his relentless badge-kissing affirmations of loyalty to Chelsea, is convinced that at 30, he is entitled to feel insulted by the offer of a four-year contract at £140,000 a week.

His failure to secure a five-year deal at his nominated figure is seemingly pushing him towards a reunion with his persistent eulogiser, Jose Mourinho, at Internazionale in Milan. Haggling over details of monstrous earning packages has never endeared footballers to the citizenry, and these are hardly times to encourage extra tolerance of such a provocative disconnection from everyday realities. But at least Lampard was in no danger of identifying with the rantings of Sepp Blatter.

It took a player as captivated by himself as Ronaldo to do that. But there are plenty of others with a penchant for recognising only what suits them in a contract, for persuading themselves that, when richer pickings are available elsewhere, a sense of obligation is for simpletons, and formal agreements are there to be broken.

Now the egregious Blatter (who not long ago was demanding respect for player-club contracts) has contrived to give such anarchy his stamp of approval. Fortunately, his reputation for buffoonery invalidated his comments as soon they were delivered, but they were grossly offensive nevertheless.

Some of his critics were probably excessively eager to relate his remarks to hell-ships crammed with human cargo or slavemasters working their purchases to death. No doubt Blatter should have been sensitive to the deepest resonances of talk about slavery, but such terrible images weren’t needed to expose the grotesquerie of his language.

All that was required was recollection of the conditions that prevailed in British football less than 50 years ago, in the era of the maximum wage (£20 a week as late as 1960), the vicious retain-and-transfer system, and the club houses from which families of discarded players could be evicted at a fortnight’s notice.

In those days, footballers were held, if not in slavery, then certainly in something close to feudal serfdom. Nobody would suggest that anyone in modern football should be remotely influenced by such distant history. But if Blatter and Ronaldo acquainted themselves with it, they would surely keep their fantasising in check—and might even doff their dustbin lids.

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Alby Jnr

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