Mes que un Cule

A guest post from Jaymin @allinthepass

And the miasma Barcelona and its faithful media acolytes have huffed around our humble club returns, right on schedule, flying in the face of the false expectation we may have entertained that this summer would be different. All in order, then. I would have preferred my first ever football blog to be about something else, anything, but I will march to the beat of the zeitgeist, because I fear the noxious smoke will be choking us for the next several weeks, at least.

That is of course provided Barcelona don’t meet our (ahem, and...pretty much the whole football world’s http://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/en/default/marktwerte/basics.html) valuation. And I think we all feel the same way about how likely that is to happen. They pass so well and play so prettily, but their conduct in this affair has been and continues to be disreputable. One has to conclude given the constant tapping up, public exhortations, and I’m pretty sure the stated desire of their head coach, that Barcelona do indeed really, really want Cesc to play for them.

But then why the frankly insulting bid, and more to the point, why the even more preposterous bid in 2010, when he had just had a 20 goal 20 assist season, and was a favorite to land a World Cup winners’ medal? Surely then, if any midfield player in the world merited a 50 million GBP transfer fee, it was the young Fabregas. So 35 GBP felt like they were making a point with us, which they are driving home further with a reduced 27 million GBP after a disappointing campaign for us and from our captain.

They want to embarrass us. They desire to stand above us, like an older executive who has just outmaneuvered a young upstart in a boardroom dispute. To put us, ahem, “in our place.” Only we’re the ones who seem to routinely outmaneuver them. Just from the top of my head mind: : ripping them off with Petit and Overmars, uh, taking Cesc for peanuts in the first place, and then, after they had decried this “theft” and presumably established safeguards against its repeat, snatching Merida/Miquel/Torral/Bellerin etc. The fact that we took Torral and Bellerin in the midst of this current public courting of Fabregas suggests that as an institution we’re as annoyed with them as our fanbase is. And that maybe we want to show them if they can be cheeky, we likewise can cheek it with the best of them.

It’s a fascinating relationship between the two clubs, hardly able to be classified as normal. We aspire to play with the style they reinvented from Cruyff’s Ajax and they now call their own. Outwardly we admire them. We both have a somewhat pariah type perception within our leagues, them for their perceived separatist attitude, us for not being Liverpool or Manchester United. Our fanbases seemed, until recently, very simpatico.

Plainly not replicated at the business level. These are just my random musings after a very busy and productive day, mind. I will explore this subject more deeply in a subsequent post.

Comments, thoughts? Below,or @morningpint & @allinthepass