The universe has inverted itself. The malcontent souls go to AC Milan, while the bad souls go to Barcelona. As for those in between – the hapless sailors aboard a ship sailed by a ruthless and sinful captain, the ocean opens up its mighty mouth but refuses to swallow them whole. Rather, they float, and they float, and they float. The currents toss them to and fro, the hypnotizing rhythm of the waves lulls them into exhausted slumber until salt water filled lungs choke them awake. Van Der Vaart is one of these souls.
Arry Redknapp is neither wheeler nor dealer, just ask him. However, when Rafael Van Der Vaart became available for less than ten million pounds (roughly one billion ounces), he rang up Real Madrid faster than you can say Football Manager. But Rafael, a hardworking if hapless soul in Madrid would be treated to no decisive ending. Rather, he fell victim to a cruelly relative social construct: time. Spurs may have faxed their paperwork in time, if time were calculated by billions of milliseconds, but by the cut & dry minutes & hours standard of the Premiership, they may have been too late.
Is Rafael the victim in a world of interests dictated by a shady corporate elite? Did the shackles of professional contracts and million-pound wages conspire against his own interest? Or is Rafael the good guy that never wins in the twenty-first century? Is he the good-natured nerd that in real life doesn’t land the beautiful female lead like a romantic comedy? Let us look at the happenings of other antsy footballers….
Robinho, a whole year removed from forcing his way out of Madrid, professed his disdain for Mancini and obtained a loan deal to Santos of Brazil. He then forced a deal to AC Milan. Ibrahimovic, after a single year at everybody’s favorite club, got a transfer to Milan after he revealed he hardly heard a word from Guardiola.
And Javier Mascherano organized a strike in a crucial Liverpool – Manchester City game. The union? La Asociacion de Capitanes de la Seleccion Nacional del Futbol Argentina, a very exclusive and prestigious bunch. The cause? El desagradable clima de Inglaterra. And the result? A fichaje from Barcelona.
Sadly, the moral of the story dissipates into a variety of interpretations. Were those three players self-assertive proletariots who effectively defended their interest and the value of their labor? Were they mere mercenaries, vagabonds of the twenty-first century looking for the next globe-trotting fix? Or were they the decisive angels, picking a side after Satan’s revolt rather than meandering on the fence?
Of course, the Arshavin example shows that the Premiership will sometimes bend its own rules. Will they be saintly and ratify the agreement? And, more importantly, does the word ratify have anything to do with rats, or is it just a three syllable term meant to make the educated liberal elite feel educated? Either way, I do approve and I don’t approve. And I stand by that.
Join us next time for another chapter in “How the Transfer World Turns….”
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