AS Roma midfielder Daniele De Rossi is one of the few one-club men remaining in football. His pal Francesco Totti is another, and on a week when he is being showered with love for celebrating 25 years at Roma, we're delighted to be able to pay tribute to De Rossi who has come out with an absolute gem of a quote.
With Alexis Sanchez justifiably taking a hammering for his social media activity after Arsenal's win over Leicester, it seems fitting that the subject of Instagram came up during an interview with De Rossi by Undici magazine [via Football-Italia.net].
When asked how De Rossi feels about the amount of time young footballers seem to be spending on their social media channels, De Rossi admitted that when he sees someone making a video while he's trying to focus on a game he feels like smashing their teeth in with a baseball bat... But he knows that's it's different for players of a younger generation.
When we started out, it was all different, that was 20 years ago. Now a 20-year-old will get into the first team and have more Instagram followers than Messi. When I was young, the older players would say ‘it wasn’t like in my day’ – that’s life and it always will be.
Mind you, some of them irritate me too. When I see them do live Instagram videos from inside the locker room before a game, I’d like to take a baseball bat to their teeth… But they’re 18 years old and in 20 years’ time they will find themselves complaining about the youth of today.
He really has a way with words.
In the same article, De Rossi admitted that footballers, as a profession, earn to much money, but at the same time expressed at how that opinion has become a cliché for footballers who want to seem more down to earth. And again he is spot on.
At times we players are a bit obvious with the cliché of ‘what we do isn’t really work, the real heroes are those who get up at 5am to go to work.’ All true, but that’s not going to change anything, is it?
You are paid by a private company that through your performances gets a certain amount of revenue. It’s an investment like any other.
Do players earn too much? Yes, but it depends how you look at it. If you were born in America and played baseball, you’d probably earn even more.
Again, you ask, do we earn too much? Yes. Do we earn too much considering the importance of what we do? Yes. Was it easy earning this much? No.
An interesting observation from an interesting man. De Rossi's minutes in the Roma side may be reducing season by season, but he has revealed that he has no plans of retiring while he is physically able to keep up on the training pitch.
If you never heard the story of De Rossi's gesture following the passing of the Italy kit-man for the 2006 World Cup, then we must insist you give it a look to gain even more respect for the Roma midfielder.
