There are plenty of people who don’t like their job. Maybe you don’t like your work yourself and that’s why you’re reading this top rather than filling out your Excel table. I really like my job if you were wondering. All that to say that even footballers, rich and talented, don’t like their job and find it boring to have to train every day, we almost want to pity them (but not too much anyway).
1. Carlos Tevez
Already before starting this top I would like to dot the i’s and cross the t’s: you will see that many of the footballers I am going to talk about like football as a sport but not as a profession, I am going to explain afterwards (because I already see you arriving with your remarks).
So, we can start with Carlos Tevez. The Argentinian said it well, he fought to be a footballer not out of passion but to get out of poverty. Tevez likes to play with the ball, but does not particularly like football, he declared in the Argentinian media El Clarin in 2018 “I don’t like football”, and “if you broadcast Barça-real and on another channel there is a golf tournament, I am watching golf”. Yet he is one of the only players in the world to have won both the Champions League and the Copa Libertadores.
2. Alphonse Areola
Alphonse Areola said in 2017 in the Canal Football Club “my wife knows more football results than me”. The French goalkeeper admitted to not really being moved by a match, and even not knowing much about football. If he still likes playing (fortunately), watching a match bores him deeply, in short, football doesn’t really seem to be his passion.
3. Benoit Assou-Ekotto
The Cameroonian international is clear about his practice of football: he does it to earn money. In 2010 he said in The Guardian: “It’s just a job. Me, my job, I do it to earn money, like all people on Earth”. It has the merit of being clear. And what Assou-Ekotto particularly hates are the playing strategies, he would like to play instinctively, explaining that he feels constrained when that is not the case. A true free electron.
4. Marc-André Ter Stegen
So level of respect Ter Stegen was strong. He admitted not even knowing the names of all his opponents, he had also declared in El Pais “people laugh when I tell them that I know absolutely nothing about football”, “sometimes they ask me the name of a player and I do not know “.
Well, the guy clearly doesn’t give a damn. So does that mean he doesn’t like football as such, I don’t know, but his lack of interest in the professional world is still quite telling.
5. Carlos Vela
What Carlos doesn’t like is not the sport itself but the universe in which he evolves. The Mexican, passed by clubs like Arsenal or Real Sociedad, even refused to participate in the 2014 World Cup for this reason. He said he missed his anonymity and that the world of football was a rotten world. We do want to believe it.
6. Gareth Bale
Ok so here we are going to qualify right away because I can already hear you screaming. You should know that yes, Bale does not put football in his top favorite sports, and moreover he has only played ten games this season and does not hide his passion for golf in the media. It’s not so much that Bale doesn’t like football, it’s that the former Tottenham star might prefer golf. He told ESPN, an American television channel: “I don’t watch much football, I prefer golf to be honest”. After all, everyone has their own tastes.
For Bale it’s ‘Wales.Golf.Madrid, in that order. (Wales, golf, Madrid, in that order), pretty clear I think.
7. Gabriel Batistuta
Once again, for the Argentinian, football was just a job. “I don’t like football, it’s just my job”, Batistuta has however evolved in very big clubs like Boca Juniors, Fiorentina, AS Roma or Inter Milan. He was actually a good player who didn’t particularly like football and did everything so that his job didn’t encroach on his personal life (which is quite complicated in high-level sport).
8. Balotelli
Balotelli likes football as a sport, that’s for sure, but the player likes to make controversial remarks and above all likes to show that he does not fit into the ranks imposed by the professional world of football. A very good player but a bad professional who said, for example, “I don’t celebrate my goals because that’s my job, when a postman posts a letter, does he celebrate? “. Does he make these kind of remarks to make people talk or does he really mean it? Impossible to know, but given how much he likes to waste opportunities and his talent, one wonders if Balotelli really likes professional football.
9. Dani Alves
Dani Alves is an excellent footballer who has won several Copa América with Brazil, several Spanish championships and a Champions League with Barça, and has also played for the biggest European clubs like Juve or PSG. How could such a footballer not love his job? Once again, Dani loves football, and that’s why he’s so good, but he hates everything that revolves around this sport. “I hate what surrounds football. I live in this world but I am not part of it. There are lies and other interests”
The professional world does not correspond to Alves who somehow tries to escape it and does not flourish in it. It must be said that when you get bananas in your face thrown by racist supporters, you understand that he doesn’t really like his job.