Can’t we just get rid of UEFA and FIFA?
A few weeks ago I posted some crap about paintings and such, and I alluded to the fact that Sepp Blatter is a cunt.
The master painter has enemies too, at home and abroad. One of which wants to impose some kind of nationalistic view on how a painting should be composed, to perhaps use colours that best represent the country, rather than the best colours for the painting. Perhaps French paintings should only contain red, white and blue in equal portions, maybe only orange paintings for Dutch masters, and green ones for the Irish. The Mona Lisa shall have red hair, a white complexion while wearing a green dress. Will this advance art as we know it, or will it simply bring down the level so that even average paintings can masquerade as masterpieces.
Blatter is in a long list of people who have something to gain from reducing the quality of club football. Everybody knows International football is played at a much lower level, for many obvious reasons, and is no longer that entertaining. Club football is where it’s at, to use the current vernacular. You can add Michel Platini, friend of Blatter, to the list too. He has had a go at Wenger for buying too many teenagers. The French asshole said:
I do not like the system of Arsène Wenger. In France, Italy and Spain it is easy to buy with money the best players at 14, 15 or 16. I don’t like that. If the best clubs buy the best 15 or 16 players, [then it] is finished for all the clubs in Europe. If my son is playing at Millwall and at 16 Manchester United come in for this player, then when will Millwall have a good team?
So if your son is indeed a talent, he should rot away at Millwall and not enjoy Manchester United’s state of the art training facilities and modern training techniques, not to mention miss out on the experience of playing with seasoned professionals and improving his overall game? It’s true that Millwall might make more money if Platini Jr. is sold on at a later age, but that’s assuming Platini Jr.’s career hasn’t been damaged by not training with a big club earlier. Would Fabregas be where he is if he stayed playing in the Barcelona reserves? Would Messi be the current world’s best player if he had stayed in Argentina?
And why question only Arsène Wenger? Surely, the biggest exploiter of signing even pre-teen players is Barcelona and its academy. They sign kids as young as 10 from all over the world, and these kids basically live with Barcelona. Talent such as Giovani dos Santos, for example, came to Spain from Mexico when he was only 12. In fact, Lionel Messi signed for Barcelona as an 11 year old, because his old club in Argentina could not afford to pay for his medical expenses (he has a growth problem that require hormone therapy). So according to Platini, Messi should have stayed in Argentina to live the life of a little person? Barcelona’s practices are somewhat controversial, but it’s not as if they steal kids from their parents – and those kids that don’t make it are still given a good education, football and non-football too – something that may not have been possible if they had stayed in their home countries.
In the end, it’s about improving football and improving the quality of players. And that’s what clubs like Arsenal can do for youngsters. And inevitably when some of the kids don’t make it, they still have had a great education that they wouldn’t have received at clubs like Millwall (no disrespect to them, of course), and while they are not good enough for Arsenal, they are still good enough for many other clubs, including Millwall. And that’s when Millwall will have a good team, Monsieur Platini, that’s when.