Sissoko and the moon worshipper

The footballer Mohamed Sissoko, normally a strong, hardworking, and efficient midfielder, is paid a salary of hundreds of thousands of euro per year, possibly more than a million per year - to play football for Juventus.

Recently, Sissoko has not been playing well at all, and the reason, admitted by the footballer himself, is that because of his religion he isn't eating anything at all during the day. This is rendering him into a spent force, and it shows painfully well during matches.

This is wrong, and Juventus should take steps to rectify matters. Mr Sissoko should either respect his contract and play football to the best of his ability, or become an Imam and practice his religion as much as he likes. His employers certainly did not contract him to admire his religious devotion. At the very least he should pay them back his wages for as long as this insanity persists.

Ah, but it's his faith, and it should be respected. Why yes, of course. Let's follow this argument to its logical conclusion. There are various faiths. Some people are Buddhists, others are Christian, Muslim, Hindus, worship the sun, et cetera. An office worker of my acquaintance, Mr Gianluigi Buffon, happens to worship the moon and stays awake all night on those nights when the moon is shining in the night sky. On days following these night vigils he is of course unable to do any real work at all at the office. But his employer should "respect" his faith, and allow him to do nothing on those days when he had been worshipping the moon, and pay him his full wages while his non-moon worshipping colleagues have to work harder to make up for Mr Buffon's lack of input. Why yes, of course.

Mr Mohamed Sissoko, you are being paid good money by Juventus, hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of euro, to play football. To play good football, to the best of your ability. Not to play the role of a 21st century version of Mahatma Gandhi.