Real Madrid and their newly elected President Florentino Perez are once again making a mockery out of the "World game" by attempting to buy themselves glory.
Real under Perez's leadership did the same thing a few years ago with the now famous "Galacticos" policy. Perez went shopping and bought amongst many others, Figo, Zidane, Beckham and Owen at ridiculous fees to bring back the glory days to Madrid. They won the Premiera League a few times and a CL trophy (or perhaps two depending on how the time period of his presidency is looked at.....and then they started to believe Real had actually organically made it all happen and guess what happened next?
They started to fade away after the 2002 CL win, Perez lost his position, and they have been rather ordinary every since, blaming coach after coach for their failure to plan for the future and develop youngsters through the ranks.
Now Perez has once again been elected with the promise to "buy" Real's way back into the history books at any cost and in a totally shameless fashion. And as the nature of Club Presidency in Spain dictates, Perez has to be flashier and more outrageous this time. So, he's paid more than 200m Euros for Ronaldo and Kaka, both of whom will reportedly earn more than 300 thousand euros a week after tax.
In doing so, Perez hopes to get enough time to "buy" a few trophies for Real, before his ego once again clashes with the Board's collective egos, the coach gets blamed, and Ronaldo starts throwing his usual narcissistic tantrums!
You might challenge me by asking the same question about other rich European clubs. Chelsea and their appearing overnight "funny Money divided between so few Putin supporters" Russian money aside, who have as yet failed to buy their European glory (thanks to John Terry slipping on the ball in last year's CL Final), most other big European clubs such as AC Milan, Barcelona, Manchester United, Liverpool, Juventus and Bayern all try to buy the best players in their desperate attempts to get their hands on the CL trophy.
That is a fair comment. However, none go crazy like Perez and Real do, and all try their hands on developing some of their young talent as well. Take Barcelona and its Youth Academy or Manchester United and Sir Alex for instance. Love him or loath him(and I belong to the later group) Sir Alex has an uncanny ability to nurture young talent into his first team (endless list of Neville brothers, Beckham, Giggs, Ronaldo, Butt etc) as well as letting restless players leave. Even the self serving, self promoting Berlusconi at AC Milan never behaved as shamelessly as Perez is at Real.
At the end of it all, Perez is simply taking the Beautiful game further and further towards disaster whilst trying to buy his way into glory of the history books.
In years to come, rest assured Real fans, and football fans worldwide will remember the expensive players who won Real the trophies. But Perez will be judged as one of the architects of "prostituting the passion of the beautiful game in order to buy himself glory"
Friday, June 12, 2009
Sunday, June 7, 2009
The Socceroos qualified for the World Cup 2010 in an emphatic if not stylish fashion
Congratulations to the mighty Socceroos, Pim Verbeek, FFA and all backroom staff and all supporters of the mighty Socceroos for their back to back qualification for the world's biggest sporting event, the FIFA World Cup.
Thank God! Gone are the days when the Socceroos and their ever loyal supporters had to wait for the nail biting matches to determine the last qualification place! The Socceroos were the second nation to qualify for next year's World Cup on Saturday(in reality Japan and Australia qualified around the same time as the first two qualifying nations).
Since taking over as the Socceroos Coach, Pim Verbeek time and time again reminded everyone in Australia, in his slightly arrogant but endearing media interviews, that he was not recruited to deliver a team capable of playing beautiful attractive football! He was there to make sure Australia qualified for the World Cup! And now he has delivered, albeit by producing a regimented, disciplined and not so pretty to watch team which has shown itself capable of defending well and at times snatching crucial last gasp victories. A trait that all successful teams must possess.
Australia have qualified from the admittedly easier of the two Asian Group comfortably and in a dominant fashion. So far, with two matches left to play, Australia are also the only team in the world not having conceded a single goal in their qualifying campaign. However, their performances have been inconsistent, at times painfully hard to watch, and on occasions breath taking. Pim Verbeek will hopefully use the remaining time between now and the WC to fine tune the team into a more consistent unit.
The next immediate task however is to make sure the fans in Australia are not taken for granted between now and WC 2010. The Australian fans deserve to see all the available stars in their long awaited celebration game in Sydney against Bahrain in June. By fielding a very strong squad and providing an attractive attacking game next Wednesday, Ben Buckley and the FFA can avoid repeating the absolute PR disaster of last year's second class Socceroos 0-1 loss to China and risk alienating adoring fans and their hard earned cash during the current financial crisis. On top of this, the team can take valuable points out of its encounter with Bahrain and Japan, without the pressure of qualifying points at stake.
Having said all that, like many other Socceroos fans, I have been following their qualifying campaigns since 1973 and have travelled the emotional roller coaster with them over the years. It therefore fills me with great joy and pride to see them qualify as one of the very first nations for the next WC. Congratulations to the players, Pim Verbeek, Graham Arnold, all backroom staff, the FFA, and last but not least all the fans in the Green and Gold army.
With a little bit more luck than we got against Italy in 2006, we might even go all the way to the final in 2010!
Thank God! Gone are the days when the Socceroos and their ever loyal supporters had to wait for the nail biting matches to determine the last qualification place! The Socceroos were the second nation to qualify for next year's World Cup on Saturday(in reality Japan and Australia qualified around the same time as the first two qualifying nations).
Since taking over as the Socceroos Coach, Pim Verbeek time and time again reminded everyone in Australia, in his slightly arrogant but endearing media interviews, that he was not recruited to deliver a team capable of playing beautiful attractive football! He was there to make sure Australia qualified for the World Cup! And now he has delivered, albeit by producing a regimented, disciplined and not so pretty to watch team which has shown itself capable of defending well and at times snatching crucial last gasp victories. A trait that all successful teams must possess.
Australia have qualified from the admittedly easier of the two Asian Group comfortably and in a dominant fashion. So far, with two matches left to play, Australia are also the only team in the world not having conceded a single goal in their qualifying campaign. However, their performances have been inconsistent, at times painfully hard to watch, and on occasions breath taking. Pim Verbeek will hopefully use the remaining time between now and the WC to fine tune the team into a more consistent unit.
The next immediate task however is to make sure the fans in Australia are not taken for granted between now and WC 2010. The Australian fans deserve to see all the available stars in their long awaited celebration game in Sydney against Bahrain in June. By fielding a very strong squad and providing an attractive attacking game next Wednesday, Ben Buckley and the FFA can avoid repeating the absolute PR disaster of last year's second class Socceroos 0-1 loss to China and risk alienating adoring fans and their hard earned cash during the current financial crisis. On top of this, the team can take valuable points out of its encounter with Bahrain and Japan, without the pressure of qualifying points at stake.
Having said all that, like many other Socceroos fans, I have been following their qualifying campaigns since 1973 and have travelled the emotional roller coaster with them over the years. It therefore fills me with great joy and pride to see them qualify as one of the very first nations for the next WC. Congratulations to the players, Pim Verbeek, Graham Arnold, all backroom staff, the FFA, and last but not least all the fans in the Green and Gold army.
With a little bit more luck than we got against Italy in 2006, we might even go all the way to the final in 2010!
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