Chalk and cheese: The glamour of a Manchester United home game is a far cry from the reality for some players.

Chalk and cheese: The glamour of a Manchester United home game is a far cry from the reality for some players. Photo: AFP

I once lived just south of Manchester. While a taxpayer in Old Blighty my good mate Stretch was like clockwork in jagging us magnificently positioned tickets down the Stretford End of Old Trafford. Stretch knows some exceptional people in rather useful places.

Old Trafford on game day is a wild sea of red. A euphony of indescribable passion, relentless noise but never, ever a boo or hiss directed at the Red Devils. The first match I went to was in 2004, against the then newly-promoted Norwich City. As is standard, a sliver of seats in the south-eastern corner was held over for Canary supporters brave or stupid enough to embark on a five-hour journey traversing the spine of England.

A decade later, my abiding memory is not of the match, but of the songs. Songs celebrating Cantona and Sir Alex, and others deriding ''City'' for being diminutive, trophy-bereft deadbeats who had spent ''28 years just waiting for a chance; to win a major trophy; to give silverware a glance''. That last one piqued my interest greatly - there's no better way to annoy my wife, Alys, than to serenade her with a different song sung to the same tune.

Sad treatment: Kaluyituka Dioko, pictured effecting a tackle on Samba Sow of Mali during the 2013 African Cup of Nations.

Sad treatment: Dioko Kaluyituka, pictured effecting a tackle on Samba Sow of Mali during the 2013 African Cup of Nations. Photo: Getty Images

Only much later did I work out that the ''City'' in the song was not Norwich, but United's poor neighbours on the eastern side of town. But how times change. David Moyes might currently consider himself fortunate that Alex Ferguson hand-picked him as his replacement, otherwise his tenure at Old Trafford might well end before the weather warms up.

As to the blue side of town, prosperity was inevitable once engulfed with the untold wealth of a billionaire Emirati sheikh.

City's acquisition of Melbourne Heart appears tremendous for the floundering Victorian franchise. But, while Heart players might welcome their new Mancunian overlords, only time will tell whether City's new moon becomes something more relevant than City's warehouse.

Such is the capriciousness of world football. I wrote a fortnight ago about significant milestone cases which have shaped the football transfer system. Only obliquely did I scratch the underbelly of disastrous situations encountered by players outside the top leagues of countries such as England, Spain and France, where the vast majority of more than $4 billion in international transfer fees has been spent this January.

With the mid-season transfer window slamming shut exactly as you are reading this, it is out of respect for players who will not create any headlines that I now seek to elaborate on the indescribably sad treatment some get.

In 2012 FIFPro - the world players' association - published its ''Black Book Eastern Europe'', the product of extensive surveying of more than 3300 professional footballers plying their trade in eastern and southern European countries, sometimes for not much more than the average wage. That survey found 41 per cent of respondents were not paid by their clubs in accordance with their contracts, while roughly 400 players had been asked to fix matches, including one-third of respondents playing in Kazakhstan and Greece. Every ninth respondent had been subjected to an act of violence perpetrated by either his club or people connected to it.

On that last point, the worst place to play would have to be Russia, where conditions are best illustrated by cases such as that of Nikola Nikezic - forced by his club, FC Kuban, to sign a premature termination of his contract after being threatened with firearms and then bashed. Or of FC Krasnodar striker Spartak Gogniev, beaten senseless by unidentified assailants in the players' tunnel after being red-carded at an away match.

Somewhat of a contrast to the glitz of the Premier League, but it's not just an Eastern European problem. In 2011 Congolese international Dioko Kaluyituka was trapped in Qatar by his club - in flagrant breach of FIFA rules - when called up to his national side. In 2007, French-Albanian player Zahir Belounis transferred from a Swiss club to Qatari second-division outfit MSA, which he later captained to silverware. On promotion to the top flight the club transferred Belounis to another second-division side, but the new club had no real desire to pay its inherited salary obligations.

Belounis sued, and in retaliation his club refused permission for him to leave Qatar under the ''Kafala'' system, requiring all foreign-national employees (including footballers) to be ''sponsored'' by their employers. A farcical standoff ensued, where Belounis, his wife and young daughters were effectively held hostage for more than 18 months - his club refusing permission to leave Qatar unless Belounis waived all claims for unpaid wages.

Belounis and his family finally escaped Qatar last November, by which time he had not been paid for almost two years.

But from another perspective football Qatari-style might be paradise in the desert. In the past two years two foreign professional players - Diego Mendieta and Salomon Begondo - died in Indonesia after coming in search of better footballing opportunities. In tragically similar circumstances, each player died of curable medical conditions, most likely because they had no money or insurance to pay for treatment. The cause of such destitution: in each case the player had gone months without being paid a single rupiah despite the terms of their playing contracts. Begondo's case was so dire he resorted to begging for food.

According to FIFPro, more than 40 per cent of top-flight Indonesian clubs were months behind in paying wages at the end of the 2013 season. In Romania and Serbia it is no better, while FIFPro found one-third of professional players in Greece are paid more than six months late. Even worse, in Croatia and Slovenia players must pay taxes and social security contributions based on their playing salary regardless as to whether they ever receive it.

Article 17 of FIFA's transfer and player status rules states players can unilaterally terminate contracts if ''just cause'' exists. Case law in FIFA's Dispute Resolution Chamber suggests these provisions are generally enlivened in non-payment cases such as those described. But contractual rights don't matter when players are financially crippled to the point they have no means to pay for essential health care or, literally, have pistols waved in their face.

In South America they roll a bit differently; common in countries such as Brazil and Argentina, but banned in England and France, is the practice of smaller clubs selling shares in the future transfer value of players in return for seed funding. FIFA's rules contain no prohibition of the practice despite the obvious conflicts of interest. The rules only include a fuzzy prohibition against third parties ''influencing'' transfer transactions, which itself is impossible to enforce when no rules exist regarding Chinese walls between third parties, clubs and agents involved in the market.

The ability of FIFA to cure such myriad problems is questionable. FIFA's task of executing its rule-making function is exquisitely problematic in a jurisdiction covering more than 200 countries. Surely though one step must be for FIFA and its six confederations to severely sanction national associations and clubs who contumeliously abuse players' rights.

The governing bodies of world football should act with incandescent rage over the despairing mistreatment of people under their ultimate pyramid of governance. Football players cannot be allowed to be treated as puppets of clubs. Those same footballers are somebody's kid; and sometimes, somebody's father.

A good friend once lent me a book about how football explains the world. Maybe though football just shines a puddle of stale light on wider failings.

Darren Kane is a sports lawyer based in Sydney

Twitter- @sportslawyer7