Tottenham are furious today with the news Chelsea have 'stolen' former Anzhi player Willian from them. Their own naivety and stupidity aside, nobody should be shocked by the turn of events as it comes born of a system of billionaire ownership which we all enable, validate and indeed celebrate.
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| Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich |
Roman and Suleiman carve it up
By Mac
We followed the news all week, overloaded and overblown as always on the usual social networks. 'Willian on way to Spurs medical', 'Willian will sign for Spurs in next 10 minutes' and so forth. The initial narrative of this story line was that Liverpool were disappointed to miss out on the former Anzhi player and Spurs were delighted to maneuver into a position to obtain same.
Those following the Anzhi and Willian storyline will have been waiting for a sudden turn of events, and we certainly got one with news that Chelsea and owner Roman Abramovich have swooped in at the last moment and snapped the midfielder up from right in front of Tottenham's nose.
Of course now Spurs are disgusted, and putting on some sort of hurt-child act via the press. Oh, woe is us, how did this happen to us, big, mean, bad Roman and his club nabbing 'our' player from in front of our very eyes.
Give it a rest, Spurs.
First of all, please God do not pretend you haven't or wouldn't pull this very same act if you were in a position to do so. If Spurs are pretending that all their transfer work this and other seasons would stand up to close scrutiny, well then, they really think we are more stupid than we look.
Secondly, anyone following the breakup of Willian's former club Anzhi Makhachkala, which we reported to you back on August 8th, should fully have been expecting some kind of twist to events. A hugely rich football club owner, Suleiman Kerimov, decides to break his club up basically on a personal whim, and you think the transfers of the associated players is going to go normally?
If Spurs expected that, then they are the naive and stupid ones.
All that aside, How on earth is anyone shocked about this turn of events? We allow this system. In fact, we don't just allow it, we celebrate it. We laud these billionaire businessmen who swoop in and buy up our clubs for personal gain. We don't question it, we simply carry on rooting for our clubs in the same old manner, never stopping to question motives or morals.
In this case, two of those same multi gazillionaire owners have quite clearly colluded on a last minute deal that no doubt contains more than the £32 million sale we are seeing on the surface.
To some extent Spurs have a right to shake their fist a little and be indignant, but please, spare us the fake shock. This was exactly how a deal like this should go down in this day and age, in this ridiculous system. Of course a couple of wildly rich, almost completely unregulated owners, both with serious questions against them and their dubious business pasts, were always going to play the game to their own rules.
Why shouldn't they, we allow it!
This whole thing smacks a little of the disgusting Home Run chase in the late nineties in Major League Baseball. The media and adoring fans fawned as dozens of cheating players, drugged up to the hilt on Performance Enhancing Steroids, smacked historic numbers of home runs. Meanwhile Major League Baseball did absolutely nothing to stem the tide of cheating, or worse, just didn't care. They too loved the adulation, money and attention being heaped on the sport.
Football today is at the whim of not unregulated, cheating home run hitters, but unregulated, motivated, super rich and entirely self obsessed billionaire owners.
We have allowed, cheered and supported this ridiculous, illogical and selfish system where rich, egocentric business men can come in and overload certain clubs with their billions in oil, gas or other ill gotten gain money, causing a massive destabilisation of football that will become clearer in the next couple of seasons.
The funniest aspect to all of this is that some people, in this case Spurs, come across all shocked when the fruit of this tree of ownership insanity ripens and falls to earth with a thud.
Open your eyes Spurs, modern football is rotten to the core, and we are all witnesses.
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