Denis Law was template for the modern footballer - he had something money couldn't buy
Denis Law was template for the modern footballer - he had something money couldn't buy
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On the day when Manchester and football lost a bona fide legend, a modern-day striking colossus, who plies his goalscoring trade in the very same area, signed a ten-year deal worth in excess of £200million. It is absolutely not his fault but a lot of the discussion about Erling Haaland’s remarkable new contract centred on its worth, about the unprecedented largesse that comes with it. That is the way of modern football, that is the way of modern sport. The bucks matter, the bucks are big news.
And that is why the passing away of Denis Law is more than the end of a wonderful player’s life, it is another staging post on football’s journey towards the end of an era when money was largely irrelevant, when it was only maverick talent that captured the imagination. They had a few quid to buy a drink or three in that era, for sure. They were headline news, for sure.
Ladies and gentleman, I give you George Best, one of the Holy Trinity. And in his time at Manchester City, United and Torino, Law probably - hopefully - made a good few quid. But Denis Law was of an era when image rights were not a thing. Sorry, Law was from an era when image was not a thing. Your image was your ability, not your social media profile.
And your journey to becoming an elite professional footballer did not take you through the hands of agents and the meticulous care of extravagantly-funded academies. Is it better now? Was it better then? The answer is largely irrelevant. Will we get another Law, a world-class player raised in an Aberdeen tenement whose father spent huge swathes of Denis’s life out at sea as a fisherman and who had to play in spectacles as a youngster? Well, actually, we might.
