Freebooters desperate to avoid fallout

A game in crisis: The PFA's policy of preparing players for a life outside has a new poignancy

While the nation remains riveted by the rantings of the £70,000-a-week Roy Keane, the really Big Issue in football is how many players might end up selling it. Or working for nothing.

At least two Football League players already are, and more may have to as life outside the financially cosseted Premiership grows ever grimmer. How the other half plays has been graphically illustrated at relegated Leicester City, where Nicky Summerbee and Billy McKinlay are happy to play without a wage packet. Well, happy is hardly the word. They claim they have no choice.

Winger Summerbee, 30, once with Sunderland, and the ex-Blackburn and Bradford midfielder McKinlay, 33, are victims of football's financial slump. Because Leicester say they cannot afford to pay them, they are turning up for nothing more than a cup of tea at half-time in a desperate attempt to earn a contract when things get better, or to catch the eye of scouts from other clubs.

So, for the time being, both have become footballing "freebooters". "There was really no choice," said Summerbee. "I could either sit at home twiddling with the Teletext, go down to the Job Centre or put myself in the shop window displaying what I do best, as a footballer. But how long I can continue playing for nothing is hard to say."

Both are anxious not to join the 600 players who are currently unemployed, cast off during the close season by clubs who could not afford to renew their contracts. Players such as the 30-year-old Simon Rodger, a Crystal Palace player for 10 years and 326 first-team appearances. He was released before the start of the season when his manager, Trevor Francis, told him the club could no longer afford to keep him. He is now training with non-League Woking in the hope that something will crop up. "With so many players out of contract it is the worst summer football has known," he says.

A trawl through the 109 pages of the Professional Footballers' Association "disengaged" list reveals some familiar names – Manchester United's Ronny Johnsen, Dean Blackwell and Michael Thomas of Wimbledon, Tottenham's Chris Armstrong and Ian Bishop (Southampton), and all going free alongside a legion of lesser lights who include Gordon Strachan's sons, Gavin and Craig, released by Coventry.

The PFA are currently covering the wages for players in a dozen clubs, including recently rescued Bradford, and their chief executive, Gordon Taylor, believes the public have no concept of the seriousness of the problem. "Nobody appreciates how vulnerable and insecure a footballer is on a 12-month contract at the lower end of the scale," he says. "When youngsters come into the game now we make sure they know the statistics about the fall-out rate. They all have their dreams but we have to give them a dose of reality. This is why the PFA try to prepare them for another life outside football through our community programme, whether they leave the game through injury, as 60 players do every season, or because contracts are not renewed, as is happening more frequently now because of the financial circumstances of many clubs."

Both Summerbee and McKinlay consulted the PFA before deciding to become volunteers at Leicester. At his previous club, Nottingham Forest, Summerbee was already on a paid-when-you play basis. "He's a marvellous crosser of the ball, a bit like his father, Mike," says Taylor. "Now he's in the shop window I'm sure both he and Billy, who is a doughty player with a lot of football left in him, will be picked up by someone. They still have much to offer, as we have seen from their performances this week.

"Reluctant as we are to see any player not getting paid for his services, they have done the right thing in the circumstances. But it is not something we would normally encourage. There are too many chairmen around who might think they are on to a good thing!"

According to Taylor, there are scores of other players currently undergoing trials with League clubs without payment. "We try to assist them by covering their travelling and living expenses, and there is always the risk of injury, which is a big worry."

The strange thing about all this is that there has never been a bigger pot of money in the game. The problem is that it is not evenly spread. "From television alone the Premiership is getting £500m plus, which works out at £25m a club. That is more than the total TV deal to be divided between 72 League clubs. It is not the money, it is the way it is distributed," Taylor says.

"Of course ITV Digital going bust has created a massive hole in the budget. But that is not the only problem. The Government used to give £5m through Sport England to football for youth development, but this year it has been cut to £2.5m and they have asked us to make up the difference."

The sound of bursting bubbles is not only heard Nationwide. Even the royally rewarded princes of the Premiership have been warned they may have to tighten their diamond-studded belts when BSkyB's contract comes up for renewal in two years. "At last the penny seems to have dropped that we are not living on planet football," says the leading agent John Smith. "The transfer market has dried up because no one is buying."

So how long will it be before the market becomes a supermarket, with the offer: buy one, get one free?