Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Citeh is Playing with Monopoly Money

Welcome to the brave new world. Rumors of Man City making an unprecedented offer to AC Milan for former World Player of the Year winner Kaka spread through the British rags yesterday, and the Daily Mail was the first to report the details: 100 million pounds in cash to Milan; 500,000 pounds per week to Kaka.

How do you pry a world class player from a team that says it won't sell? You make AC Milan an offer they can't refuse. How do you convince a world class player to come to a team that's currently sitting 15th in the Premier League? You make Kaka an offer he can't refuse.

No matter the outcome, this is the equivalent of Godzilla landing in Tokyo -- the normal rules of the game have changed, and all transfers up until now seem quaint by comparison, even the 48 million pounds that Real Madrid paid for Zizou. Or maybe it's more like Frankenstein -- doesn't City know that, when you play god, you only create monsters that want to rip your arms out?

The simple fact is that Man City has just raised the stakes exponentially on gaudiness. There just doesn't seem to be much design or plan to the way they're building this team: splash obscene amounts of Abu Dhabi cash at an underperforming and dysfunctional squad and then hope for the best (i.e., it'll be Mark Hughes's fault when the team continues to underperform).

Maybe this will unite 99% of football fans in wishing that the Citeh experiment ends in disaster. It sure would be hard for anyone to argue that this good for the game, except maybe the most diehard City fan, but even they must feel some sort of trepidation at where this is all heading. And to think, it was less than six months that Thaksin was at the helm of City.

Quoth Ian Curtis, "Where will it end?"

2 comments:

phil said...

The downfall of a Citeh team containing Robinho, Ireland, SWP, Elano, and Kaka is the devastating fact that there is only one ball.

Agreed on the money thing. The sums being discussed here, even if they're just rumors, are simply ridiculous.

Precious Roy said...

Thaskin was at the helm of City and it looked like they might go into administration and get docked points.

If this happens, I want to see him show up at the into presser in a shirt that reads, "I Belong to Money" or "I Belong to Citeh" or maybe even "I Belong to Arabs."