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This is a piece that I’ve wanted to write for quite some time, but I’ve been unsure on how I should formulate this. Hypocrisy rears its ugly head with startling frequency in today’s world, ranging from your accomplished and knowledgeable college professors to your astute state officials, state officials who were elected to office with a staggering amount of the overall votes.
In sports, hypocrisy is prevalent too, with several self-righteous sportspersons seeing the ‘truth’ in their statements and actions, only to radically alter the direction of their thoughts in the future. A classic example of this would be the erstwhile former Arsenal left-back Gael Clichy.
This is what he said to say on Emmanual Adebayor’s move to City in 2009,
“I really believe if you are a player who thinks only about money then you could end up at Manchester City,” the French full-back told The Sun.
And two years later, Clichy jumped on the City bandwagon faster than we hear Ravi Shastri belting out one of his trademark clichés! True, City was a much bigger club in 2011, having qualified for the Champions League and emerging as serious threats to Mancunian neighbors in the title race. Sure, Fabregas was leaving and Nasri would bail too, but if Clichy was really loyal to Arsenal, wouldn’t he have stayed and helped Wenger’s cause instead of jumping ship? After all, greener pastures was the ‘only’ thing that City offered, which Arsenal couldn’t.
Other than players jumping ship to these new-age financial behemoths, we have the most hypocritical side in modern football, the glorious and legendary FC Barcelona. From constantly nagging Arsenal about Fabregas, to criticizing Real Madrid’s lavish outlay in 2009, the Catalan side has done it all.
From David Villa to the beloved Andres Iniesta to pantomime villain all publicly lobbying for the signature of Fabregas, failing to realize that they were unsettling Arsene Wenger and his squad. But why must they care? After all, they are the ‘almighty’ Barcelona, and it was only Arsenal, just another random club.
Let’s hope one doesn’t turn into another
After well over three summers worth of hocus-pocus, Barcelona got their man, and Gooners bid a tearful farewell to Fab. Then the next year, the No. 4 displayed just how well he had taken to life back to Barcelona, urging RvP to ‘stay’ at Arsenal, purely because he was still an Arsenal fan.
Barcelona have always prided themselves on La Masia, and producing homegrown players. After the return of Florentino Perez to Real Madrid in 2009, which heralded the second-coming of the ‘Galacticos’, the club spent nearly €250 million on new players such as Cristiano Ronaldo, Kaka, Xabi Alonso, Karim Benzema and Raul Albiol. Joan Laporta, the then president of Barcelona made the following statement after completely ignoring the fact that his team had spent €102 million in new signings the previous summer,
“We create players, not buy them, unlike Real Madrid.” – Joan Laporta, FC Barcelona President.
Barcelona would then go on to spend €100 million that summer on monumental flops, Zlatan Ibrahimovic and the unknown Dmytro Chygrynskiy. I thought Barcelona only ‘created’ players?
The likes of Chelsea and Manchester City have been credited with ‘destroying’ football with their oil-driven success (more recently PSG and Zenit St. Petersburg), due to the gargantuan amount of money they spent to get to the top. Sure it is a bit unethical, but don’t they have ambitions to get to the top?
I’m not saying I like the way they spend (I would sound hypocritical then), but why is it that Liverpool were able to blow-up £100 million in two windows and not be made the butt of internet jokes? We all know that outcome of Liverpool’s ‘project’ (hell, as a Liverpool fan I know better), but how is what they did different from Chelsea and City?
Sure, they’ve been among the biggest for decades now, but didn’t they offer massive contracts to has-beens such as Joe Cole? Why haven’t Manchester United’s premier expensive flops such as Juan Sebastian Veron, Anderson etc. been thrust onto the spotlight? Why isn’t Barcelona drawing flak for the ridiculous release clauses it sets for its players?
Then it hit me. The existing powers always have to stamp out new threats. Just as sure as you try to pick on the new student or co-workers, these existing entities HAVE TO discredit the latest rich brats in town. Quietly moving away from the spotlight of their ‘projects’, they credit Chelsea and City with ‘destroying’ football.
Hypocrisy has been rampant ever since the times of Dixie Dean and Herbert Chapman and its only bound to continue.
No, I am not advertising Chelsea and City’s path to the promised land. I hate it just as much as the next guy. Just don’t be so hypocritical about it.
Thank you.
