'Fans are never loyal to players'

Blessed with mercurial talent, an elegant touch and a sublime strike, John Barnes graced English football with his presence in the 1980s and '90s. These days he dazzles fans with another gift of his – thoughtful and witty analysis on the game.

The Liverpool legend, who is now a pundit on British television, was the guest of honour at the Showtime English Premier League launch at the Burj Al Arab this week and shared his views on the state of world of football.

And one thing that had the star smiling was the signing of Robbie Keane by his former club, Liverpool.

Although Irishman Keane caused controversy among Tottenham Hotspur fans by first pledging his future to the club and then jumping ship to Liverpool, Barnes defended the striker by claiming the fans who preached loyalty were not necessarily showing it to the players.

"Did footballers ever have loyalty? Robbie Keane did what he did in exactly the way it should be done," says the 44-year old. "So if the transfer was not done, the Spurs fans are still on his side. If it is done, the Spurs fans hate him, but it doesn't matter because he is now gone and it's worth it – otherwise the same thing would have happened to him as is happening now with Gareth Barry and Cristiano Ronaldo, and that could upset the whole balance, team spirit and the togetherness of a squad.

"The fans are never loyal to players. They loved the No10 he was wearing at Tottenham, they don't love Robbie Keane. If Keane had come to Spurs and he was rubbish then they would have said 'get rid of him' – so they don't love Robbie Keane.

"Look at the amount of players that come to clubs who are then completely discarded because they're rubbish – have fans shown any loyalty to those players? No! So it is a business and you have to do things in a right way. Therefore if the clubs say you can't go, you don't.

"What happens these days is the player says he wants to go, irrespective of whether he has a four- or five-year contract. If he can't get a transfer he doesn't give his all in training – I don't agree with that.

"I have no problem with players making decisions on what's right for them – because fans have to recognise that a player will do what's right for him and his family. "

Speaking of transfers and loyalty, Barnes touched on another player who caused a stir in the media recently – Cristiano Ronaldo, who revealed at the end of last season that he wanted to move to Real Madrid. Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson was having none of it and refused to negotiate with the Spanish club and a long-drawn out saga was further stoked when Fifa president Sepp Blatter made a general comment that football players were like slaves – a view Ronaldo readily agreed with.

"What Blatter said, he had said before. He wasn't talking about Cristiano Ronaldo," says the Jamaica-born player, who was capped 79 times for England.

"He was talking about the way the Premier League clubs get these young players, like [Cesc] Fabregas when he was 15. If you look at the academies they have these 14- and 15-year-olds from all different countries. Although, I do think he was referring to Ronaldo in this case.

"However, my forefathers were slaves, they were not on £150,000 (Dh1m) a week; I wouldn't mind putting up with being a bit of a slave for 150 grand a week, especially if they're not whipping me or putting me on a ship and transporting me halfway across the world. So that's my kind of slavery.

"The clubs had it too good in the old days where they really controlled the way their football was run in terms of the players' contracts and all that, but now we have gone too far the other way."

Foreign ownership in the Premier League is an issue that has come under scrutiny in recent years with eight of the 20 clubs owned by non-British entities, but Barnes says ownership is not the issue. "Regardless of foreign ownership or not, it could even be local, what is important is the intention," says Barnes, who retired in 1999. "The intention is to be successful and everybody wants that. Football fans don't care if you are £100 million in the red if you win the league.

"When I was at Celtic [as manager] I was balancing the books and Rangers were spending big and were in the red, but they were also the ones winning the league.

"But for the foreign businessmen coming in, they want to earn the money back. Now you can't have it both ways, you can't have people investing and then saying to them just invest and lose the money. It's the intention and finding the right balance that's important. So foreign ownership doesn't matter, it's the intention of the owners."

Barnes believes that the Premier League is the most exciting in the world and says the reason why there has been hardly any movement in the transfer market is due to the fact that England now have the majority of the best players in the world.

"People are saying there is not much activity in the transfer market," says Barnes. "The reason is 90 per cent of the best players are already there, so unless Kaka is going to come to England and maybe one or two others, there are no better players outside of England.

"That's why Manchester United and Chelsea have not been busy.

"When growing up in the 1980s, Italy was the place to be for foreign players. Players in the 1970s, 1980s didn't want to play in England because the nature of football was too physical.

"Twenty years on and there is not a single player who doesn't want to play in England, regardless of the financial implications, but also because of the respect it engenders for you as a player."

FACT BOX: JOHN BARNES

Full name: John Charles Bryan Barnes

Date of birth: November 7, 1963

Place of birth: Kingston, Jamaica

International career: 79 england appearances; 11 goals

Club career: 233 Watford appearances: 65 goals; 316 Liverpool appearances: 84 goals; 27 Newcastle appearances: six goals

Honours: Two League titles, two FA Cups, League Cup