The typical professional footballer has had a tough start from an early age. About 4 in every 5 professional footballers emerge from poverty, amidst families struggling to make a bare living. The pure determination with which most soccer stars endure is beyond words. What’s seen by the world is the sparkling top of the iceberg — all the glittery luxuries and extravagant houses and cars, while the rest of the iceberg — endless hours of effort, unrelenting hardships — is hidden from view.
Having sweated through innumerable long days in heat and cold, having made the nation ecstatic with winning goals, having inspired a whole young generation, deserves more than the average executive salary. It deserves the price of bringing peoples and nations together. The returns for such a valuable impact at such a large scale is, deservingly, no less than astronomical.
A footballer walks onto the turf with the colossal burden of expectations of the thousands in the stands and the millions at home — ‘No pressure’.
Another apparent “Top-earning job” is acting. But are they really overpaid?
Who is influencing the masses? The actors. Whatever the stand of an actor is, it echoes through millions of lives. Their civic lives are constantly at risk; for example, if they are doing a stunt and an accident occurs, their acting career is terminated (Jackie Chan was at the brink of losing his career after fracturing his skull and suffering from brain damage level 6 after injuring himself in a movie).
Since they are public figures, they have given up their lives. Every moment, they are watched by thousands of eyes resulting in their children also victims to the public eye. The long, nostalgic hours spent under the odd weather to give us that perfect moment; that short clip of entertainment, or in a foreign country without loved ones for filming sets to capture a perfect atmosphere. These are a fraction of the hardships that actors face.
“We all live our lives for ourselves, but footballers and actors live for others”
