Neymar- the latest footballer to jump onto the multi million pound gravy train.

Neymar- the latest footballer to jump onto the multi-million pound gravy train.

Hey ho! The new football season is just over a week away and the rumblings of unrest can be heard in every corner of the globe. At mega wealthy Barcelona, the outrage and grumblings of discontent can be heard in every Spanish bodega and taverna you can possibly think of. Some Barcelona fans will be weeping into their sangrias and the more militant will be tearing up their season tickets with righteous indignation and barely concealed fury. Neymar had left the building. It was a historic day in the wild, horribly materialistic and greedy world of the transfer market. Some of us just dropped our heads in despair.

Earlier on today a blue Audi pulled almost guiltily out of the Nou Camp, Barcelona's celebrated and palatial ground and so it was that the most excessively gifted and, quite possibly, indulged and feted player Brazil have produced in recent times, left for what seemed like greener pastures. The thought occurred to you that Neymar had left a rich Spanish mansion for a French chateau.

Within the next 24 hours, Neymar, the Brazilian sorcerer with his very own box of magic tricks, will sign for Paris St Germain and Barcelona will become ancient history. But the money that PSG have spent on Neymar has once again become of the most morally unacceptable of all issues. Nowadays the whole mad, mad world that is the transfer market seems to be spiralling completely out of control and in the cold light of day those who so heartily disapprove of this mercenary merry go round may have to grit their teeth and just pretend that it couldn't possibly get any worse. Or could it? Well, it could but then none of us would be remotely surprised.

We all know that football has become much more than a global commodity for the masses. It is a hugely financed, graspingly acquisitive sport where the players of the world are vastly over-rated, pampered almost insanely wherever they go and then made a huge fuss of if they so much sneeze in a nightclub. They fly from one country to the next, blissfully content to wear the gaudiest football boots, the most stunningly colourful of shirts and then gobble up the cash when somebody asks them to sponsor an X-box, Play Station and a natty pair of socks.

Of course this is the age of market forces, of so called long term contracts that are so meaningless that they may just as well not exist. So is Neymar just the latest victim of circumstances or is he just glad to hear the cash registers ringing away melodiously? Neymar is joining Paris St Germain for the dreadfully obscene and outrageous fee of £198 million. Now you and I know that this is an appallingly large amount of money and totally ludicrous to those who may be starving in Africa, the children who spend all of their days heartbreakingly pleading for a drink or a proper meal.

But as we all know football has now taken complete leave of its senses and throughout the world heavy sighs will become louder with every passing day. It's hard to know why football has finally embarked on this crazy multi-million pound gravy train where the game has become drawn into a hellish web of horrendously inflated transfer fees. The telephone directory numbers have risen almost exponentially with the current rate of inflation and some of us simply have no idea when it will ever end.

Neymar of course, is about to leave a club that has now become one of the most famous and decorated market brands. He departs a club that once boasted one of the greatest players in the world and a number of familiar figures in Britain. Johan Cruyff was arguably one of the most spectacular and flamboyant talents ever to grace the Barca shirt. Then Britain's very own Steve Archibald and Gary Lineker inherited the mantle of lethal goal scorers. But now Neymar has now decided that the stunning architecture of Barcelona's Nou Camp was not quite what he was looking for after all.

So let's stop for a minute and consider the astronomical size and silliness of £198 million. If somebody had stopped you in the street and told you that any footballer could be valued so distortedly and unrealistically then you may have well thought such nonsensical madness belongs on the richly endowed trading floors of the world. It is uncontrollable and sooner rather than later you suspect a financial fireball will sweep through the game with disastrous consequences in the long term. But hopefully not.

Here in Britain we are still reminded how it all started. During the 1960s football seemed to be quietly minding its business, players changing clubs at what seemed at the time, sensible and rational fees. Then Johnny Haynes, Fulham's devoted and superb midfield player, became the first player to earn £100 a week. At the time it almost felt like a harmless and gently inoffensive price for an old First Division player. Haynes was a beautiful passer of the ball and as such was rightly regarded as fully deserving of such handsome remuneration.

But even £100 a week then seemed terribly extortionate and far too much for a First Division footballer. Besides my dad had to be extremely grateful for his paltry £7 a week with enough for a packet of cigarettes. But he didn't have trot out of a tunnel at Craven Cottage and he didn't have to deal with the charismatic Jimmy Hill. Still, for the first time, footballers were being rightly rewarded for a career that could have been potentially cut short as a result of a lengthy injury.

Fast forward to the end of the 1970s and football's next notable landmark transfer fee. When Trevor Francis became Britain's first £1 million striker, most football fans simply looked to the skies and asked for explanations if indeed they were ever needed. The glorious Brian Clough, a no nonsense, remarkably outspoken manager with Nottingham Forest, thought nothing of ushering in an era for football that was simply beyond our comprehension. How did one footballer suddenly become the subject of a million pound transfer fee? What happened to that gentle age of innocence and contentment?

So it was that Trevor Francis, an obviously talented and natural goal scorer with his first club Birmingham City found himself thrust into the glaring spotlight because somebody thought a ground breaking amount of money would not only raise eye-brows but leave most of us just breathless and dumbfounded. Francis went on to enjoy a glittering career with Forest culminating with that famous headed winning goal at the far post that won the European Cup for Forest against Malmo in 1979.

Then slowly but surely the transfer fees began to soar through the roof, through the financial glass ceiling, over the rooftops of Britain and straight into some head spinning stratosphere that can scarcely find any reasoned argument. Football is now at the mercy of grinning agents and startling sponsorship deals that simply add more and more figures to their hefty bank balances. One of these days football will shake itself. open up its eyes and discover that money is no longer the sole dictator of its destiny.

Oh well its off we go this weekend. The last cracks of willow against a cricket ball are now fading into late summer, tennis kept us briefly occupied at Wimbledon and the football season is now days away. That yawning gap between the middle of May and the middle of August is about to be filled by  hundreds and thousands of eager beaver football fans with well oiled voices, players who will take full advantage of billiard table green pitches and most of us will be wondering whether Chelsea boss Antonio Conte will still be wearing that black cardigan at the height of summer.

Across Britain much, if not all, of the female population will be privately hoping that those nine months of non stop, incessant football will simply fly past. They will air their grievances, murmur a couple of well meaning objections and then find that all of that rugged masculinity is just a passing phase and come May they'll soon stop talking about debatable off side decisions, the number of goals their team might have scored but then let in clumsily and unforgivably.

On Sunday the cameras of Sky TV will offer its first offering, its aperitif before the main course begins in earnest on Saturday week or Sunday week or even Monday if you haven't lost all hope and can't be bothered to watch the game at any point of the week. Sometimes you have to laugh at the sheer absurdity of the modern game.

The Community Shield will bring together FA Cup winners Arsenal whose manager Arsene Wenger was so vilified by the club's supporters that it's a miracle he's still there. Then the Premier League champions Chelsea, with their dark suited manager Antonio Conte will march back onto the hallowed Wembley turf where his team suffered perhaps their only setback of last season when Arsenal simply blew them away in this year's Cup Final.

I, for one, will be particularly watching out and carefully scrutinising the claret and blue fortunes of West Ham United. Patience will have to be a virtue because West Ham have to wait until the middle of September for the club's first match at the London Stadium owing to the World Athletics Championships. The club have made some rather tasty signings in the speedy and quick witted Javier Hernandez once of Manchester United and Marko Arnautovic once of Stoke City which doesn't sound that appealing but the reports are favourable and Arnautovic can score a bumper crop of goals.  As a happy Hammer it may be advisable to remain slightly optimistic. Neymar of course will just sit back, relax and think of France and an exceptionally lucrative future.