It is usually around this point of the discussion that some brilliant mind pipes up with the old classic: “course they’re happy, they get paid millions”. Which is rubbish, of course: the phalanx of miserable lottery winners, as well as a litany of psychological studies refuting the link between money and happiness, should tell you that. And in any case, football’s sharp and very public income disparities are almost designed to engender envy. Earning £50,000 a week is small comfort if the guy playing alongside you is on £100,000.
A recent Fifpro survey found that footballers are more prone to depression than the general public. And the Professional Footballers’ Association does plenty of good work in helping its members manage the game’s unique stresses: instant change, huge material gain, unimaginable pressure, early retirement. But happiness and depression are not binary states. Most of us, if we’re honest, bumble along somewhere in between: slightly happy, slightly unhappy, and frankly far too preoccupied with real life to feel very much of either. That phone bill needs paying. Must reply to that email. Did I just smell biscuits?
Bertrand Russell posits that unhappiness springs from an unhealthy preoccupation with the opinions of others. Plato says happiness is found neither in the accumulation of material goods nor in the indulgence of personal desires. Both would almost certainly have regarded Joleon Lescott’s infamous tweet on Sunday, in which he responded to intense criticism of Aston Villa’s 6-0 defeat to Liverpool by posting a picture of an expensive sports car, as the act of a deeply unhappy man. Obsessives are never truly happy. People on social media are never truly happy. The young are never truly happy. In truth, football consists of little else.
Thomas Aquinas insists that happiness can only be achieved through a spiritual union with God: good news for devoutly religious players like Crystal Palace’s Wilfried Zaha. But Russell says the secret of happiness is possessing a broad range of interests, while Schopenhauer argues that true moral worth derives from a rejection of egotistical actions. Neither quite tallies with Zaha, a man who admits he gets his hair cut every single day.
Clearly, certain players are happier than others. Lionel Messi, for example, whose every shimmy and side-step exudes a certain childlike delight, as if he is skipping through a magical world of candy-floss and unicorns and sugary moonbeams rather than an exhausted Getafe defence. This, perhaps, is the biggest difference between him and Cristiano Ronaldo, who for all his magnificent achievements has never quite shaken off that intense, brooding air of dissatisfaction, like a man who had his pint spilled by a goalkeeper 35 years ago, and has dedicated his life to exacting revenge.
Nor should happiness be confused with grace or flair on the pitch. Dennis Bergkamp was capable of giving great joy, but rarely looked like he was experiencing any himself: a player imprisoned by his genius, haunted by the millions of passes that only he could see. By comparison, Mathieu Flamini is a relatively limited footballer, but an irredeemably happy one: all flying tackles and glorious indifference, like the middle-aged man in a nightclub who is clearly having more fun than anyone else.
Are footballers happy? You may wonder why it matters. But in truth, it's really just an extension of a simpler, more fundamental query. Are you happy? It is a question nobody ever seems fussed about asking. Yet to do so, it strikes me, is to cut to the very chase of life itself.
- Telegraph