Source: Daily_Mail
PATRICK COLLINS: Come on City, what's love got to do with it when you're paying that much money?
It was the final league match of the season and Old Trafford was en fete. The title
was secure and the songs of triumph were booming through the bright May afternoon.
Then, late on, Sir Alex Ferguson changed his team. He called off Carlos Tevez and the reaction was extraordinary. For Tevez moved slowly, reluctantly, towards the dugout. He blew some kisses, slobbered at his badge, fluttered his hands. At one stage, he appeared to brush regretful tears from his eyes. Naturally, he was given the standing ovation he had so blatantly invited.
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tevez and ferguson
There, there Carlos, you'll have more money to spend at City - even if you'll have no trophies to polish: Sir Alex Ferguson lets Tevez know the real price of City life
His post-match celebrations were even more shamelessly rehearsed. He conducted an extended lap of honour with his wife, his young daughter and a conveniently acquired Argentine flag.
He tried to appear embarrassed as the crowd chanted: ‘Fergie, Fergie, sign him up!’ And he left the arena long after the other players, with the smile of a man who could not lose.
More from Patrick Collins...
* Chelsea fall into a trap of their own making over Terry 11/07/09
* Sledging isn't funny, it's daylight yobbery 04/07/09
* Benaud's best: Legendary commentator picks his favourite Ashes clashes 04/07/09
* Ignore this vile abuse, Kelly Holmes is a true Brit 20/06/09
* Patrick Collins: Shame of the three wasted years over football's 'dirty' secrets 13/06/09
* Fabio leaves no room for debate: It's his way or no way... just like Ramsey 06/06/09
* Three billion reasons why football has lost touch with reality 06/06/09
* Magician Hiddink rewarded for a spell of absolute brilliance 30/05/09
* VIEW FULL ARCHIVE
Had Sir Alex caved in to pressure and paid both the fee and salary which the player’s ‘advisers’ were demanding, then Tevez would cheerfully have signed for United. But Ferguson concluded that the demands were excessive and in came Manchester City.
Last week, following a piece of pouting prattle about how he was unloved at Old Trafford, Tevez took City’s £150,000-a-week, five-year contract. The move, he said, was ‘a challenge’. Money, he said, ‘has never been important’.
He was not alone, of course. Gareth Barry did much the same thing, rejecting Liverpool and filling his pockets with oil wealth. Barry, too, had a high-minded
explanation: ‘People can talk about the money because of the speculation in the media but the players that are now joining are proving my decision to be a correct one.’
So, it’s really all about ambition. And the fact that Tevez, Roque Santa Cruz, Emmanuel Adebayor and others are equally ambitious to become instantly mega-rich somehow validates that decision.
And then there’s John Terry; still pondering, agonising, seeking answers to vast, eternal questions, like ‘How much?’ If Chelsea’s captain/talisman/ soul/spirit should decide to stay at Stamford Bridge, then we shall hear how he agonised deeply before coming down in favour of loyalty and an improved contract.
But, if he opts to double his loot, then the reasons will be impeccably Corinthian.
Mark Hughes, City’s manager, has already sounded the appropriate note: ‘It’s not a question of finance or money, it’s about a different challenge and John being at a different stage in his life and career,’ he said.
But, of course. Terry woke up one morning and said to himself: ‘You’re getting a mite jaded, John boy. What you need is a challenge. I’ve got it — Manchester City!
city players
New boys plus one: Gareth Barry, Steven Ireland, Roque Santa Cruz and Carlos Tevez take up a pictute opportunity in Abu Dhabi
Now there’s a club you’ve always dreamed of playing for. And I shouldn’t be surprised if you could come to some satisfactory financial arrangement. Not that that’s remotely important.’
This is the kind of fable which Hughes and his ilk would have us believe; that football is awash with altruists, all desperate to do the right thing by the game. It may contradict our experience and offend our intelligence but that will not stop them spinning the story.
Garry Cook, Manchester City’s executive chairman, takes up the theme. After
acting as a kind of elevated court jester for City’s last owner, the saintly Thaksin Shinawatra, Cook has transferred his affections to his new patron, the zillionaire Sheik Mansour.
‘This isn’t really about spending,’ said Cook, after helping the owners spend £150million in the past 12 months. ‘I’d like to just make sure the message is clear that we’re investing in the future of the football club.’ Not ‘spending’ but ‘investing’.
The more you study those two sentences, the more fatuous they seem.
But Garry was undeterred: ‘The quality of players that we’re bringing to the club is showing the intent of our owners and our ambition continues to reach new heights,’ he said.
‘Everybody likes to have fans around the world and not just in Manchester, so we hope we will become the darling of world football.’ And that is that we’ve come to. Some of the richest men on earth decide to sprinkle their small change on an unsuccessful English football club.
Since they have rather more small change than anybody else they attract a stampede of mercenaries. Everybody knows how it works but everybody pretends that there are
nobler motives involved.
And the chief hustler blurts out their modest aspiration to become ‘the darling of world football’. If he’s right, then money really can buy you love.
But, of course, he’s wrong. He may even be barking. Yet what they have in common — Tevez and Barry, Hughes and crazy Garry is that they expect us to take them at face value, to believe that their motives are pure and their ambitions untainted by anything resembling greed.
In short, they think we are fools.
And they are not only offensive, they are quite mistaken.
Bolt can keep the summer spirits soaring
bolt
True genius: Usain Bolt
Tom Watson, patently decent and prodigiously gifted, rolls back the decades at Turnberry. Tiger Woods takes his premature leave of The Open, colourfully cursing intimations of mortality.
England’s cricketers celebrate their greatest escape in Cardiff with flair and passion at Lord’s, attacking the Australians with the kind of intent they have not revealed since you-know-when.
And in our ears still ring the cheers for Roger Federer and his historic Wimbledon triumph.
When the world is full of groin strains, when Rafa rants and Fergie fumes and every month contains at least three Sky Super Sundays, these are the high summer days we shall recall with a sigh.
And it is just possible that the best is still to come. Next weekend, at London’s Crystal
Palace, Usain Bolt will run 100m. On Friday evening, at the Stade de France, he survived a fallible start, strode through wind and driving rain and stopped the clock at 9.79sec.
The form is with him, the mood is on him. All he needs is a warm, still evening in the
capital and the improbable record he set in Beijing could be reduced to rubble. Already
the summer of ’09 has been truly memorable.
One week hence it may achieve vintage status.
Warne, a voice to respect - now the Ashes is complete
From the moment they bowled that first ball in Cardiff we sensed that something was missing from this Ashes summer.
Then he plonked himself down in the commentator’s seat, loosened his tie, bade us all a breezy G’day and the cast was complete.
Somebody once described Shane Warne as ‘deeply superficial’, a curious term, yet one which conveys his taste for triviality. There is the junk food, the hair experiments, the gambling exploits, the textual adventures, the hint of Botox, the larrikin leanings.
warne
It's Shane, not mike: But Warne's appearance has now made the Ashes an even better occasion
They all hint at a persona which Warne has rarely attempted to repudiate.
And yet, when he speaks about cricket, all the myths dissolve. He is shrewd, acute, intuitive. He does not talk down to his audience — instead, he persuades them to his
point of view. There are those who swear that he would have made one of Australia’s finest captains had he ever mastered the art of avoiding trouble.
Certainly he was admirably equipped for the role, having deceived and defeated entire
generations of Test batsmen on his way past 700 wickets. ‘Cerebral’ is not a world readily associated with Warne but it will serve to describe his approach to his art.
Above all, he carries the authority which comes from being perhaps the greatest bowler who ever turned his arm over.
Cricketers purr at his praise, cringe at his criticism. Charge him with recurring daftness and terminal frivolity and he would plead guilty. But never take him for a fool
or an impostor.
For Shane Warne knows his subject and communicates that knowledge with style and
flair. He is a most welcome addition to the English summer
PS...
Every time Ian Poulter suffers a setback, somebody, somewhere regurgitates his famous quote. The one that goes: ‘I haven’t played to my full potential yet. And when that happens it will just be me and Tiger.’
Well, we’re not about to break with tradition. And that fateful remark sprang to mind when Poulter, inevitably clad in look-at-me uniform, joined his rival in missing the cut at The Open — Tiger by a shot, Poulter by 10.
As somebody once said, be careful what you wish for.
