“I think in football there’s too much modern slavery in transferring players or buying players here and there, and putting them somewhere.”
So said FIFA President Sepp Blatter, president of FIFA, on July 100th 2008. He was speaking of the plight of Cristiano Ronaldo dos Santos Aveiro, held against his wishes by the evil Manchester United empire and forced to scrape a meagre living on more than £6,000,000 per year.
Blatter has long been a devoted servant of the human race. Before becoming President of FIFA, he was president of another insightful organisation aimed at the furtherment of the human race - The Worldwide Society of Friends of Suspenders, an organisation formed to protest at womens’ decision to wear pantyhose instead of suspender belts. Blatter famously bribed FIFA members $100,000 dollars each to vote him into power at FIFA, and since then has blocked FIFA’s own internal investigation into the widespread corruption, vote-rigging and bribery for which FIFA has become synonymous. These actions are in the public domain, having been extensively covered in the BBC’s Panorama program of July 10th, 2006.
One wonders what Blatter and Ronaldo might make of events in modern-day China; for example, the discovery at a brick factory in Shanxi province of 31 slave workers. Forced to work 20-hour shifts in return for only bread and water, they were covered in burns from being forced to carry bricks that had not cooled. They had not washed, cut their hair or cleaned their teeth in over a year and doctors later scraped the dirt off them with a knife. Eight of the slaves were so traumatised they had no recollection of their own names or past history. They also reported how one of their number had been beaten to death with a hammer for working too slowly. Details are sketchy but it was not thought that any of the men were paid in excess of £6,000,000 per year, shopped at Louis Vuitton or were engaged to a model. The brick factory in question belonged to the son a local Communist Party dignitary - an organisation, like FIFA, with a less than impeccable PR record.
One of the slaves recovered from the Chinese brick factory.
The Real question - sorry, couldn’t resist the pun - is what Manchester United should do with this wretched specimen of humanity. On the one hand, they could force him to rot in the reserves for the next four years. This is what football needs. Players have too much power (and are egged on by the media) and something must be done to curb this. Look at the current situation with Gareth Barry, an average midfielder who isn’t even the best player at Aston Villa, and the way he has cynically engineered a move to Liverpool without ever having submitted a transfer request. This last would be unthinkable to the likes of Barry and Ronaldo; submitting a written transfer request would mean forfeiting their “loyalty bonus” and their current clubs would be forced to settle their contracts. Only by teaching a lesson to the highest-profile example of all might some semblance of balance be restored.
But Manchester United is a business, and as a football team they also need to replace Ronaldo, whether he skulks off to Madrid or fights Possebon, Wellbeck and Hewson for a place in United’s second string. So should United force the best possible deal from the (Spanish-government subsidised) Madrid club? As a fan I would accept a deal involving a couple of players and a decent cash settlement - Sergio Ramos would make an excellent replacement for the creaking Gary Neville, and Robinho would be as much a like-for-like Ronaldo replacement as we could wish. Marry that to a cash settlement such as the £30m that United probably need to secure Berbatov from Spurs, and in this humble fan’s opinion that would represent a good deal - Ronaldo for Berbatov, Sergio Ramos and Robinho and an intact transfer budget. I wouldn’t blame Sir Alex in the slightest for taking a deal like that.
The question is - can football afford United to do what’s best for them, or what’s best for football?
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