The Sport Column

In the first game of their crazy, inspirational, just-completed run at the FIFA Club World Champs, Auckland City FC, the tournament’s only amateur team, were destroyed 10-0 by German champions Bayern Munich.

No surprises there. Bayern are one of the richest and most successful teams in football history. Their highest paid player, Harry Kane, earns approximately NZ$48m a year – an amount of money so large, so ludicrous, as to be immoral.

Auckland’s only goalscorer at this year’s FIFA Club World Cup was Christian Gray. As a trainee secondary school teacher, Gray earns at most $62,000 per year. Were he and Kane to both start work at 9am on January 1, Kane could knock off at lunchtime, spend the rest of the year playing FIFA on his Nintendo Switch, shout Gray an all-expenses paid holiday to Munich, and still pocket more from his three hours work than his erstwhile Kiwi opponent would get from his year at the blackboard.

Bayern spends more each year on Kane than New Zealand spends on managing climate change ($46.4 million, Budget 2025). Bayern pays its players more in a week than New Zealand spends on its Climate Change Commission in a year.

Ok, sure, that’s not apples for apples, the environment is not exactly entertainment. How about the arts? Great question: Bayern spends more on player salaries than the New Zealand government spends on its entire arts, culture and heritage sectors combined.

Ok, maybe slogging your way through The Bone People isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but you’ve got to find something entertaining. Pick your poison:
Movies? Harry Kane gets 10 times more each year than the New Zealand Film Commission.
Dance? 7 times more than the Royal New Zealand Ballet.
Music? 20 times more than the New Zealand Music Commission.
Fancy music? Three times more than the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.

And so on.

To be fair: Harry Kane gets $48m a year because he is very good at what he does and lots of people like watching him do it. His drilled left footed finish from 25 yards against Flamengo last week, for instance, was thrilling to watch.

Many teachers are also very good at what they do, but do people like watching them do it? Based on my kids’ testimony, not really. And I have yet to see a single compelling YouTube montage of a teacher killing it on essay marking, report writing, or even morning roll call.

Auckland City’s second game at the FIFA Club World Cup was against Portuguese giants Benfica, another ludicrously wealthy European club, although not in Bayern’s league (total player wages barely enough to match government funding of Sport NZ). Once more, Auckland took a thrashing, although only 6-0 this time, so I guess a weak argument could be made that things were looking up.

Auckland’s final game was against the far less affluent – but still fabulously rich when compared to NZ’s arts sector – Boca Juniors, of Argentina, Arguably the greatest team from arguably football’s greatest country and home of the legendary Maradona, Boca’s main question going into the game was not whether they would thrash Auckland, but how violent that thrashing would be. Boca scored relatively early, then laid siege to Auckland’s goal, and the early indications were that it would be quite violent indeed.

But they didn’t reckon on what they were up against. Their opponents were not wealthy, cosseted gods, insulated from the perils of the world. They were people who work all day for not much money, then sit for hours on Auckland’s choked motorways at 5.30pm so they can have the privilege of training late into the night on substandard grounds.

Most critically, Boca failed to reckon with Christian Gray: a man who spends his days at Auckland Grammar taking abuse and spitballs in the back of the head from the entitled offspring of Aucklanders far wealthier than himself. This is a man who knows what it is to get knocked down and to get up again.

And so it was that, in the 56th minute, Gray stepped forward for an Auckland City corner, rose above some of the most vaunted defenders in South America, and headed Auckland to a 1-1 draw with one of the greatest teams in football history.

It was a heroic achievement, although ultimately meaningless. Gray and Auckland were knocked out of the tournament, as expected. Kane and Bayern Munich went through to the next round, as expected.

Soon, this tournament will be over and both these national heroes will be back at home with only their memories, feelings and real lives, and the question will be: which of them is happier? The one driving his supercar around the streets of Munich and ordering bottles of Krug at Michelin-starred restaurants, or the one driving himself around Sandringham in a 2008 Toyota Corolla and hanging out for his Friday night Domino’s cheesy garlic (extra large), and a cheeky can of Speight’s nicked from his flatmate?

Correct.

Greg Bruce is a freelance journalist and author.