THE ARROGANT AND THE FRAUDS GET RUDELY INTERRUPTED

Oh how Sir Alex Ferguson must’ve been incandescent with rage. A self-appointed managerial Deity who has  for years gone unchallenged in the world of football business suddenly found himself called a ‘hypocrite’ and ‘arrogant’ by Tottenham’s bullish young chairman Daniel Levy. In the same statement, Levy found time and words to also spotlight Rafa Benitez’s crude behavior around the desired acquisition of Robbie Keane. In taking both managers on so bluntly in the public eye, Levy has undoubtedly played a dangerous game. After all, they are both members of a quarter who behave like untouchables in English football, who believe the rest of the league (and English game) is there to serve them. Levy also left himself open to charges of politiking, that is to say, arse-covering. And then there are those, many upon many in fact, who are simply delighted that Daniel Levy stood up and said what no-one has had the courage to say before. Because the fact is that the impunity with which Ferguson and Benitez operate is disgraceful. This column supported Ferguson when it came to the Ronaldo/Madrid situation, but this column also forgot how may times Ferguson has done similar to others, including Spurs. The club’s pursuit of Michael Carrick two seasons ago trod the same lines as their stalking of Berbatov, and we will never know if the rumors of Gary Neville bringing a ‘Carrick’ Man Utd shirt to the 2006 World Cup Finals were true or nasty gossip. Indeed, so bizarrely brazen has their pursuit of Berbatov been, they felt compelled to run a story on the official Man Utd website about Berbatov’s agent saying he felt it was likely his client would end up at Old Trafford! 

And then came the rebuttal, Ferguson at first claiming Spurs would be ‘embarrassed’ if they took it any further whilst also curiously adding something about Levy being ‘funny like that’ or ‘that way’ or…oh, who cares, because the truth is I’ve been misunderstood anyway. JUST like Fergie in this instance. Yes folks, in case you didn’t know, only a few days after the rage and rebuttal came the curious confession of the Norwegian Man Utd supporters club who basically said they mis-understood Ferguson when he spoke to them at a supporters meeting, and that THEY were to blame. Convenient doesn’t even do it justice.

Then there’s Robbie Keane and Liverpool. Reportedly tapped up by a ‘mutual friend’ (get your googles out junior detectives!) Keane reportedly (note how we have to say that) told Spurs supremos that an approach had been made, that he wasn’t biting, that if the cub were willing to sell he’d happily move but that he would be equally happy to stay. Somewhere in there, more tapping came, more ‘happiness’ drained away, and suddenly, Keane was desperate to go and play for his ‘boyhood’ club (note: Keane has been seen at Celtic matches, not Liverpool ones). And so suddenly, from a player who on May 28th said he was enjoying the stability and enjoying life at Spurs and looking forward to a rumor-free summer, we had a player who was apparently becoming a ‘negative’ force in the dressing room, angling hard to get the move through and generally showing as much ‘love’ for Tottenham as he might a discarded tea-bag. Apparently senior figures at the club were ’shocked’ at his turnaround whilst at the same time acknowledging that with that amount of outside pressure, it was getting harder and harder to keep him from looking in that direction. All because Rafa, in a cheap two-bit dime-bag thief move, doesn’t want to pay the price tag so decided, instead, to unsettle the player in the hope of seeing him become such a thorn in Spurs side that they’ll sell him on the cheap. 

Who knows, perhaps the tactic will work? We have yet to see how strong Levy will be in the face of cold, hard cash. I know that many of us who don’t think like businessmen would rather take 5 million less for Berbatov and sell him to Barcelona than to Man Utd, and still more of us would rather sell Keane anywhere but to Benitez. Of course in the Moroccan bazaar culture of football dealings, it is odds on that both will now leave for close to 50 million. But what Levy has done is blow the whistle on their egregiously brazen arrogance and behavior. What will it achieve? Probably no more than each player getting the price on the their tag paid, as well as ‘outing’ certain players who like to think of themselves as club ‘legends’ and so forth. But if it only achieves those things, plus the satisfaction of satiating the hunger for many supporters to see their club stand up to this sort of bully-boy bullshit, then it was a whistle worth blowing indeed.

Finally, I must complain about the sanctimonious bore of a supporter, you know, the one who’s ‘rational’ all the time. Their reactions to the anger shown by many Spurs supporters at Keane’s betrayal is to say we all need to ’see it from his perspective’ and so on. OK, His perspective. Over 50k with some bonuses on-top. Club vice-captain. Hero. To many. I’m sorry, it’s hard to see it making any sense however I look at it. So if I wish to get angry about this sort of stuff, then kindly bugger off and allow me the courtesy. I’m not harming anyone, and Keane couldn’t give a monkeys what the likes of me think, though I’ll give him one guess. In short, being rational as a football supporter is an absurd, stupid and annoying decree, thus walk far away from people who try to impose such nonsense on us genuine supporters.

BRING BACK THE OLD FASHIONED BUNG NOW!

As I watched Luton Town get literally torpedoed out of the football league by both the FA and the FL this week with their 30 point deduction being upheld, and as I watched the papers churn out yet more club-via-agent drivel designed to unsettle the contracted staff of other teams, I found my mind drifting to motorway caffs and brown paper bags. Remember those days? A jag would pull up at the Watford Gap services, a couple of geezers in long overcoats with collars out would shuffle inside, and as the lukewarm sausage, beans and chips took on a rubbery layer of grease, the old crinkled brown paper bag would find it’s way next to the rolled up copy of The Evening Standard and PRESTO! The next afternoon, a major transfer was born, supporters were delighted, neither chairman seemed to be complaining and none of the other parties involved were unhappy. Indeed, everyone was cheery, no-one was complaining and things moved on smoothly (partially because no-one was stupid enough to actually eat the sausage, beans and chips!).

Oh the rumors flew around from time to time, but transfer windows were more civilized, managers operated under a code of conduct, and the various officiating bodies did a decent job of turning blind eyes to obvious problems. Only George Graham and Brian Clough ever really got dragged through the mud, and in the former’s case, you could say that greed played a major part (as for Cloughie? I’ll never be convinced it wasn’t a bottle of scotch in ‘that’ particular brown paper bag!).

But then, one fateful day, the officiating bodies got a bad idea. Imagine a world with NO bungs, they pondered, NO dodgy agents, NO illicit payments and NO tapping up. Unilaterally. A world where everyone, as best could be administered, was equal. It seemed like a brave new era. And the only reason the idea was bad, was because none of them could organize a piss-up in a brewery, let alone the complexities of this irritating issue. 

Err, I’ll have a ham and cheese plus one Teddy please…

The FA hired a ‘bung-buster’, Graham Bean, back in 1998. Mr.Bean (and I use the term in full knowledge of the image it brings to mind) gave up 17 years in the police force to take the job. He was to ferret out the bad people and clean it all up. He was to be a Knight in shining armor. He was to head up a ‘compliance’ team. Oh how sweet it sounded. By 2003, he was being offered a pay-off to leave his post. He had become disillusioned with the lack of support he felt he was receiving from his superiors, and as he walked out the door, so did a fair few of his dossiers on figures within the game such as John Gregory and the agency Proactive and it’s chief executive Paul Stretford.

Recently we saw some spluttered rumblings of action as the great bung inquiries looked set to ensnare Harry Redknapp, agent Willie McKay and Sam Allardyce. There was even an edition of UK news program Panorama which appeared to supply some pretty irrefutable evidence against both Redknapp and Allardyce. And what did it all come to? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Just like the 2006 scandal involving Arsenal and their manager Arsene Wenger. British TV show Newsnight blew the lid off the fashion in which Wenger had basically set up a ‘football factory’ which would see Ivorian youth players signed by Belgian club Beveren, where Arsenal would then swoop for them if deemed good enough. A former colleague of Wenger’s, Jean-Marc Gillou, had an academy for young players in Abidjan. he was also the guiding force behind who Beveren signed. Newsnight claimed that any profits made via player sales by Beveren would result in 30% of said-fee being given to Gillou (at this point I should point out that Emmanuel Eboue was bought from Beveren by Arsenal for an ‘undisclosed figure.’ Throw in the fact that a spell in Belgium helps work permit situations and the math could not be clearer. Add to this the fact that Arsenal made a 1 million pound ‘unamed’ loan to Beveren, and you can see the plot is pretty thick and requires some deeper investigation…unless you’re the FA, the Premier League of FIFA, all of whom found ways to distance themselves from the blaring accusations raised by the Newsnight story.

Instead, football seems to prefer to see clubs like Luton Town battered from pillar to post for the indiscretions of past regimes. Not content with punishing small clubs like Luton, who already find it hard to jostle for any elbow room in the increasingly rarefied circles of British football, these absolute paragons of hypocrisy wish to beat the dream of ‘examples’….they’re setting an example, they’re creating a precedent.

But are they? I wonder what Sheffield United would have to say about these morons and their ‘precedents’. I wonder how anyone can view the insanely arbitrary ‘punishment’ handed out to West Ham for their illegal registration of Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano. Indeed, on April 27th, the Hammers were fined 5.5 million pounds for witholding information on who owned the players (MSI – a group of international investors owned the players). Curiously, there was no immediate stipulation banning Tevez from appearing again in West Ham colors until the matter was sorted out, and there was even more curiously no points deduction. This despite two illegally registered players having appeared in a number of matches. This despite the fact that one of those players was the only reason West Ham avoided relegation in the first place.

On May 13th, 2007, in a match West Ham had to win to avoid relegation, Carlos Tevez scored the winning goal at Old Trafford. Against Man Utd. The club he would go on to join for the start of the following season. Sheffield United were relegated instead. West ham, with their multi-millionaire owners, paid the fine whilst laughing no doubt. Sheffield United, without nearly the same level of financial clout, had to recruit resources to take their case to an appeal. Which, of course, failed (the appeal that is). 

So perhaps NOW my cry for to BRING BACK THE BUNG makes more sense. It was so much easier when people didn’t pretend they cared about the sanctity of the game. it was so much better when we didn’t have to witness such flagrant abuses of power. It was so much more fun when the back-pages weren’t taken up by the sort of hypocritical sanctimonious waffle from the Premiership, the Football League and the FA explaining to us how beating the likes of Luton Town to near-death with billy clubs is going to save football.

My advice to all those morons who are spouting this obscenely hypocritical rubbish is to do us a favor and don’t even try to justify the disparity. Just quietly acknowledge that there is one rule for one and another rule for others, and the whole thing depends on exactly what sort of clout you carry in the game. This would also allow the likes of Luton Town to understand that honesty is not the right path, that in fact it’s better for them to shut up and sort it out internally.  Anything else is, these days, an egregious insult to all genuine football supporters.

IS NOTHING SACRED? BLATTER, RONALDO, APOLOGISE!

Allow me to share something from the admittedly not-100% reliable wikipedia. It is a short definition of the word ’slavery’ and I think we’d all agree that despite their occasional unreliance, this particular definition is on the money.

Slavery (also called thralldom) is a social-economic system under which certain persons — known asslaves — are deprived of personal freedom and compelled to work.

Slaves are held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase, or birth, and are deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to receive compensation (such as wages) in return for their labor. As such, slavery is one form of unfree labor.

Earlier this week, as the Ronaldo/Man Utd/Madrid soap opera rumbled on with no end in sight, FIFA President Sepp Blatter saw fit to stride into the mix totally uninvited. In itself this surprised no-one, the man has somehow made a career out of it, but this time his words were far more egregious than ever before.

“In football there’s too much modern slavery,” he opined, “I’m always in favour of protecting the player. If he wants to leave, let him. If Ronaldo stays at a club where he does not feel comfortable to play then it’s not good for him or the club. The important thing is that we should also protect the player. And if they want to play somewhere else, then a solution should be found.”

As if this wasn’t disgraceful enough, as I sat writing this week’s belated column, word had reached the back pages that Blatter had a wingman on this one…surprise surprise, it was Ronaldo!  “I agree 100 per cent with what he said,” cried the struggling winger, “he is right.”

GENTLEMEN! A few words of correction…first to you, Blatter. What total, and utter, rubbish. ‘If he wants to leave let him leave…’ And what, Mr.Blatter, about the concept of the contract? The concept of honor? The concept of being responsible for the choices you make in life. And as for you Ronnie, you tarty young Portugeezer you…IS Blatter REALLY right? ARE you REALLY a slave? DOES that 120,000 UKP per WEEK (yes folks, read that again, PER WEEK because THAT is the CONTRACT Ronaldo put his very own John Hancock to for another 4 years recently) really sound like someone being held against their will from the time of capture and refused compensation for their labor? Of COURSE it doesn’t. And why? Because this situation has as much to do with ’slavery’ as opining that the Queen is a ’slave’ owned by the country and forced to put time into these pesky ‘royal’ events! In fact the Queen would have a greater cause for complaint simply because she was born into the job, she didn’t necessarily choose it, but Ronaldo and his ilk made choices to struggle and toil from their 100k sports cars to the pitch in back for a few hours a day. It’s absurd isn’t it? Pathetic even. And ultimately, it’s very very insulting to those who were (ad still are) slaves. To those who’s only route to feeding their families is to put in impossibly gruelling labor in exchange for a “wage” which is probably annually what Ronaldo earns in an hour.

If the likes of Blatter (and to a lesser extent greedy young narcissists like Ronaldo) continue to promote such blatantly disrespectful behavior and attitudes (not to mention poor comparisons) it will prove that this ‘President’s’ dream is to see European football reduced to 20 huge inter-galactic clubs (with, he hopes, as few British teams as possible) and a whole sludge pit of small-town ‘teams’ for the rest of the proles who won’t be able to afford to follow the Super Galactico League 2014. Furthermore, it will prove that if football is to survive as a game of the people, then morons like Blatter must be sacked immediately as their poisonous ignorance and greed is going to end up eating the ever-weakening integrity of the world’s greatest sport.

 

AUTHORITIES STRIKE AGAIN

This time back in the UK, where Luton Town have suffered the unimaginable and been fined a further 10 points to add their 20, meaning they will start next season in League Two at minus 30 points. All because some ball-less nimrod decided that a ‘precedent’ had to be set; I’m sure Sheffield United would have a few words to say about that! But it’s impossible to look at the pathetic punishment/abuse of Luton right now and NOT ask about West Ham. Or even about the levels of debt that big premiership clubs carry without punishment for not going into new seasons ’solvent’…I’m sure there’s a complicated justification, but as my friend said, rich-people’s debt is always different isn’t it?  Truth be told, it’s another kick in the teeth for the small club. And what incentive does this offer for ANYONE to bother coming clean? Luton came clean, the people who committed the offences were sacked, a whole new regime was brought in, fines were paid, new people brought on board to run the club PLUS they waited an extra two months for their case to be head because of the Leeds Utd appeal and THIS is the result?  It’s like a drug addict admitting to possession for personal use, getting 10 years without parole and seeing a kingpin dealer get a 6 month suspended sentence! To clarify; the PRECEDENT this sets for ALL smaller clubs (and probably a few bigger ones I wouldn’t guess) is keep schtum. Don’t say a word, don’t even TRY to be honest, because if you are, you will quite simply be butchered. It is another shameful display of arrogance and stupidity from a governing footballing body and it’s cohorts. The Football League’s insolvency rules are beyond a joke, yet despite the fact that they recognize this fact and will be looking to overhaul it, Luton will still pay the heaviest of prices. No-one’s saying they shouldn’t have been punished, but EVERYONE’S saying that enough was actually enough about a year ago when Luton weren’t even able to sign players.The situation is a joke, but sadly, the cavalry does not seem to be coming to Town’s rescue. Indeed, if they try to launch their own rescue blitz via an appeal, they will be dumped out of the league immediately. Again, a ridiculous state of affairs…

 

RAFAEL BENITEZ. A DESPERATE MAN

 

This desperate little man has now gone public with his ‘interest’* in Spurs Robbie Keane. Having unsettled Gareth Barry since May, it now appears that Benitez will do his best to unsettle Keane. Here’s someone who hopes the Spurs board go and tell Benitez in no uncertain terms to stick it where the sun doesn’t shine and advise the man that his business practices need some serious refinement.

 

 

APOLOGIES…24 HOUR DELAY IN THIS WEEK’S COLUMN

Due to the enforced stress and pressure being caused by the David Bentley transfer rumors, ‘Jumpers…’ has found itself incapacitated but will have it’s usual words of wisdom on Thursday 10th July.

I’d like to thank all 6 of you for your patience…

PLAYERS GET WEIRD… AND RAFA TAKES ADVANTAGE

For the old-school football supporter, these are troubling times. Just when there’s been a grudging acceptance of the fact that players don’t actually really care about the badge anymore, we now have a whole new wave of behavior. It appears that now, if a player decides they want to move, then they should be allowed to do so by their employer if a) they can profess that the club of their desired destination was tattooed on their childhood heart or b) if the player has given ‘loyal’ service or has enjoyed a ‘love affair’ with their current club. Yes. You read the last bit correctly. Apparently, Emmanuel Adebayor has experienced the latter with Arsene Wenger during his two years at Arsenal; this now entitles him to a grander display of affection from his paramour, or else Adebayor will be off to Barcelona or Milan where he can hopefully find new love. “If this was a money problem than he would’ve asked to leave,” proclaimed his agent in a comment shallower than a toddler’s swimming pool, because the truth is that is almost exactly what these things invariably come down to. As for the notion of ‘asking’ to leave being the definition of a player’s desire to depart, well, if people want proof of what poppycock that is, look no further than the tomfoolery being waged on Merseyside.

Rafa Benitez has never been overly concerned with how he is perceived in the public eye. Able to deliver icy blasts whenever he feels necessary, not troubled by the continuing drama of Liverpool’s American soap-opera ownership and never one to shy away from a dig at fellow managers, Rafa has finally decided to drop the disguise in one final area of his work. Player acquisition. Doubtless something has finally twigged under his balding pate with regards to having not delivered the title the red half of Merseyside craves, because Rafa has become increasingly brazen in his, ahem, ‘interest’* in other players. Take Gareth Barry. Rafa sees him become Gerrard’s natural international midfield partner and thinks, ‘hmmmmm, I’d like a slice of that please!’ And thus begins a drip-drip of tabloid tittle-tattle, will Barry go, he has ‘admirers’ at Anfield, the obligatory ‘he’d be a great addition’ quote from a star player (Stevie G step on up) until finally, Barry comes out and virtually slates Villa for not conceding to such a move after all his ‘loyal service’ over the years. Further, Barry has complained that Martin O’Neil, Aston Villa’s manager, did not work nearly hard enough to convince him he should stay (captaincy, wage increases, public statements saying how important Barry is to Villa obviously not counting whatsoever. Understandably O’Neil throws his hands in the air, realizes he has been gazumped, is forced to say ‘bollocks!’ or something like that, and has only a fat transfer fee to soothe a bruised ego and conscience. Content that his money hagglers can then squeeze the cheapest price possible for a player who now patently has no future with Aston Villa,  Rafa then ’sharks’ off elsewhere to his next potential target, showing an ‘interest’* in Spurs Robbie Keane ‘if ever’* the player was to be ‘available’*. Keane made it known in some interview or another that he was a boyhood Liverpool fan and that Dalglish was his favorite player, so all of a sudden we have reports of Robbie Keane demanding a transfer to his ‘boyhood heroes’ so as he can wear that number 7 shirt. This despite the fact the man has 4 years left on his contract and only just returned from a honeymoon earlier this week.

 

Rafa…he’s only trying to help footballers the world over achieve their ‘dreams’…

 

First the News Of The World ‘reports’ this ‘interest’* before the Daily Mail runs a story stating that Keane has actually ‘handed a transfer request in’*…who, you might wonder, put them up to it? Who whispered such things down a phone? And what could their interest be? Well, the missing ingredient here is the appearance of Peter Crouch as a reported makeweight in the ‘Keane deal’*. Porstmouth want Crouch (Defoe in particular fancies him as a strike partner) but don’t want to pay more than 10 mill or so. Liverpool have been told to schtump up 18 million for Barry. There is a known cashflow problem at Liverpool. So math-meisters, give it your best. Could it be that Liverpool want the Crouch cash quick to get Barry? or could it simply be that Benitez wants Robbie Keane and as such is delighted to let the whole thing unfold into a series of bitter comments and regrettable anger whilst the drip drip drip sees Keane increasingly swayed to the idea of moving to Merseyside? To play for his ‘childhood’ heroes (n.b. not Celtic anymore)? In modern football who can be sure, but one thing’s for certain; it’s a travesty when people can freely  go and intimidate, insert and impose themselves in such a way upon a rival. Rafa should be ashamed and appalled at his own behavior, but he won’t be. He’ll simply claim the ‘dog-eat-dog’ mentality that modern football appears to have bred. The moral compass that judges such a man can only be set on an individual basis, though I believe that all TRUE football supporters know what’s right and what’s wrong. 

Of course, the man who has set the bar for ‘dreaming of childhood’ in player employment terms, is Man Utd’s Ronaldo. He had a dream…sounds like an Abba song doesn’t it? Except it’s hard to imagine that the dream was particularly real when Ronaldo signed a new contract a year ago. Genuine dreamers don’t do such things. And you have to wonder who’s next in the ‘dream’ move stakes? And how many spaces these ‘dream destinations’ will have by the time all the dreamers have professed their love? Has Berbatov dreamt of Manchester, Milan or Barcelona? Does Lampard drool at night like when he was a lad of Milan? And if, say, Milan or Juventus suddenly decided Robbie Keane was their man, would Robbie’s childhood nights spent dreaming about spaghetti-o’s for the following night’s tea be used as evidence? The truth is if Real Madrid came in for pretty much anyone waving the wallet the way they do, that player would immediately spew some ‘undying love since childhood’ rubbish. These things have little to do with dreams and much to do with money and playing for one of, say, a dozen clubs in the world. What, one wonders, must the likes of Luton Town make of such outrageous tap-work in the highest levels of the game? And where, one must further wonder, are the great eyes and ears of the Premier League, Football League and FA aimed as these almost farcical capers are taking place? 

For the football supporter, it’s getting to be a bit much. It’s why players like Ledley King, Jamie Carragher and Ryan Giggs are respected by virtually every supporter of every club. Because they don’t blast away in the media, or via their agents, about ‘dream moves’ or ‘loyal service’…they let their feet do the talking. And as such, their loyalties are illustrated by those footsteps.

THUG LIFE ROOLS

Joey Barton got off with 4 month suspended sentence for beating up his former Man City team-partner (no mate in there) Ousmane Dabo. In order to hear the verdict, Barton had to leave his current stay at Her Majesty’s Pleasure full-board B&B, where he’d been serving a 6 month sentence for beating some other poor sucker up at a late-night fast food restaurant. Quality our kid Joey, stuffed to the gills wi’it. And there have been many others with young Joseph; the abuse of trainees at parties, the open ridicule of fellow professionals for writing books, the on-pitch flare-ups…the point is that Joey Barton has some serious issues, and dodging a proper sentence for his pathetic, cowardly attack on Dabo by turning a ‘not guilty’ into a ‘guilty’ plea once he learned the recourse a guilty plea would bring, does not an honest or earnest young man make. And if Newcastle United have one pair of testicles between them in that boardroom, Joey Barton will be sacked before he can stomp on them any further.

Everyone deserves a second chance. But how many people in daily life get 4th and 5th chances? More to the point, is Joey Barton a genuinely sick man who needs help, or a pre-genetically coded leopard? If he’s the latter then we all know the phrase…

DON’T KNOCK SUPER RON JUST YET

Reports of Ronaldinho’s expanding middle have sounded a death knell on his career the world over. As photos from a charity match in Venezuela started to emerge, it was visually apparent that Ronnie had been enjoying some dietary tips from Brazil team-mate Ronaldo, and that the two of them had enjoyed a churruscarria too many in their fight for fitness.  The truth is you knock the man at your peril. At 28 years old, fat will fly off him the moment he trains seriously again, and being the sort of player who does not rely exclusively on electric pace, his skills will see him rise again. And when that happens, we will all see why he remains one of the outstanding talents in world football…of that be most sure.

 

 

* any similarity to words such as ‘lies’, ‘bullshit’,'conjecture’, ‘fiction’, ‘fairyland’, ‘evil gossip’ are absolutely 100% coincidental and the author regrets any potential similarities and wishes it to be known these are absolutely unintentional.