This little fact speaks volumes about the new ethos at the heart of modern football. Though a rich man, Keegan is but a small fish swimming in a sea of capitalist sharks from the ITV executives through to the multinational corporate sponsors shelling out for advertising time. At the beginning of the twentieth century football was patronised by big business. The situation today is very different. Television rights, sponsorship, ownership and advertising are all sources of profit.
Players change clubs for millions and are paid grossly inflated salaries.
Its popularity as a mass spectator sport grew in the late nineteenth century, especially in the urban industrial areas of northern England and Scotland. With the growth of sport as mass spectacle came the spread of professionalism. The game had been dominated for years by the Old Etonians, the Old Corinthians and such like. Then the industrial city clubs came of age with Blackburn winning the FA cup in 1883. These fiercely partisan crowds were not what the bourgeoisie had intended.