"Come on, let's feel compassion for the rich, let's remember that they have stewards but not friends."
Ezra Pound
When someone laments the disproportion between the money earned by professional athletes and those of us who make ends meet, I usually respond that, well, this is capitalism, dear. To each according to his fate, not – unlike what Marx preached – according to his needs.
If you want a nurse to earn the same as Messi, sign up for the revolution. If not, you suck it up. Which does not mean that the free market system is mathematically flawless. One looks at certain players from Barça, or from the catastrophic Manchester United (they lost 0-3 at home this weekend against Bournemouth, an English Girona), and it is clear that there is no pure justice. But the spectacle of football generates enormous income and everyone who competes in it deserves, I suppose, a piece of the pie.
Of all sports, the exception to the rule would be golf or, to be more precise, the LIV circuit of golf, an NGO for the rich sponsored by Saudi petrodollars. Its latest beneficiary, the Basque Jon Rahm, has just joined, making the jump from number 28 to first place in the world ranking of income for athletes, according to the financial magazine Forbes. Suddenly “Barrika's”, as Spanish journalists call him, is far ahead of those who were tied at the top, Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.
The LIV circuit was inaugurated last year. There has been a lot of media interest, but more because of the controversy it generates than because of golf itself. Few television channels broadcast it. Almost no one sees it. The 54-hole format, instead of 72, is not convincing, and even less so is a second format of teams of four players, each with their own name. As if suddenly the Crushers or the Fireballs (that's what a couple of the 12 teams in the LIV league are called) were going to generate the intensity of adhesion of an Athletic Bilbao (Rahm's club) or a Liverpool. Can you imagine followers of the Crushers, a random invention of some sheikhs, singing You'll never walk alone?
No. The LIV has been a sporting and commercial fiasco. And a bonanza for golfers who have abandoned the old PGA circuit for Saudi money. Half of the most renowned players in the world have been seduced by the LIV, among them the North American Phil Mickelson, coiner of a phrase that will go down in history.
“The Saudis are scary motherfuckers,” he said, referring, one assumes, to the dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the mass beheadings of political dissidents, the Saudi custom of sentencing individuals to up to 34 years. in prison (put the name Salma al Shehab in the La Vanguardia digital search engine) for giving your opinion on Twitter.
A couple of days after making that comment, Mickelson signed up for LIV, in exchange for one hundred million dollars. Shortly after, Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, Cameron Smith and Bryson De Chambeau, all major winners, joined for similar amounts. None today is at the level of Jon Rahm, considered by many the best golfer in the world, and hence the record figure of 300 million that he received last week for moving to LIV. He is likely to earn about 200 million more annually once he starts playing.
There are those within the PGA circuit who refuse to sell their souls. The Northern Irishman Rory McIlroy stands out, whose decision is based, as he has explained, “on moral reasons.” With his Basque appearance that worships the honorable steak, it seemed that Rahm was one of them. He had resisted, yes. A few months ago he declared that he "laughed" when people associated him with the LIV, that he had "never played golf for money," that hundreds of millions more would not change "one iota" of his family's lifestyle.
Last week he changed his mind. “I have made this decision,” she explained, “because I believe it is the best for me and my family.” Good. She had the wisdom to reconsider and the humility to recognize that yes, she really did need the help of the Saudi NGO. It would be nice, anyway, for him to share a small part of his fortune with three or four nurses, perhaps starting with those who work at the health center in his beloved town, Barrika.
