Neil Clark: UK football won’t be rid of selfishness and greed until salary caps are brought in.
Yesterday's events, on what the Daily Mail called the "craziest day in English transfer history", remind one of the classic post-war Italian film Bicycle Thieves. In it, a poor man and his son search the streets of Rome for his stolen bicycle which he needs for his work. His search proves fruitless. Totally demoralised and frustrated, he decides to become a bicycle thief himself. Acting selfishly can be contagious.
You can read the whole of my First Post piece on the Fernando Torres saga, and why it's one big step back or the English game, here.
4 comments:
"For" rather than "or" in the last sentence one supposes.
I am no fan of Torres but your account is unfair to him.Liverpool have hardly built the side round him: it is full of lightweights and nonentities .(Don't forget Northampton outplayed them in the Carling Cup).Rodrigues,Babel and Ngog are no help to him and the midfied suffers from the loss of Xavi Alonso.Lucas is not his equal.
Torres was badly injured and seems to have lost a yard of pace.Liverpool seem to have persisted in playing him when he was not fully fit,
Torres went from a club that looked after him to one that did n't.Dalglish's churlish behaviour in making him train alone so as to keep his influence over the rest of the team to a minimum was a disgrace.Football is a game for gentlemen (the rules say ungentlemanly conduct will be punished or they did when I was a referee.)There does not seem to have been much gentlemanly conduct towards Torres or towards Roy Hodgson who seems to have been pushed out in favour of a Victorian Scots millowner style of management.
Liverpool bought Torres from his home club for a huge fee.
They have bought Charlie Adam for a snip and have taken Carroll from Newcastle (gutted) as well as Suarez.
Live by the sword, die by the sword.
Darren Bent left Sunderland out of the blue in a big money deal and now Newcastle have lost thier most promising player in years (apparently against his will) yet only Torres' transfer has elicited such a strong response.
Do I detect a whiff of good old Scouse self-pity?
Mascherano ,remember him at Liverpool ?, has recently spoken up for Torres in terms not dissimilar to mine.Roy Hodgson inherited a very weak side, about five players short of top-of-the- premiership standard.Like the immature Dale and Brennan in "Stepbrothers" ,Liverpool and Man U and Newcastle fans have a strange sense of entitlement ( to Europe and the championship title), while clubs in Birmingham and London are a lot more realistic.
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