By Tony Attwood
There’s a story in Le Matin that I don’t think made the front page of English newspapers (largely because it’s a story about foreigners and, as we know, the English are interested in what foreigners do, because, well, they’re not English). ) which deals with the threats that Angel di Maria faced when he was trying to end his football career, playing in his hometown through Rasario.
As soon as the concept was raised, Di Maria threatened. Or at least his circle of relatives was threatened. As a result, Di Maria again left the game in Argentina.
About the situation, he said: “There is this box lying in front of my sister’s store: a pig’s head with a bullet in the forehead and a note that said that if I returned here to Central (the Rosario club), the next head whether it be that of my daughter Pía,
The story remained a secret until the relatives left the area.
And here we must not forget that such a risk is atrocious and unacceptable for any human being, this guy is a world champion with the Argentine team. In the past he played for Real Madrid, Manchester United, Juventus and Paris Saint-Germain.
Rosario recently has a town of increasing violence and drug trafficking and troops patrol the domain. So yes, it is a harmful area, but now it turns out that it is also an area in which footballers can be threatened and, therefore, expelled.
Not so in England; at least not yet, but the country can move in any direction. So I wonder what reception Emile Smith Rowe will get when he leaves Fulham against Arsenal. I hope it is a circular of applause from the Arsenal fans: as far as I can see, he was looking to stay at Arsenal, and he was patiently out for a whole season, without making a fuss. . . although, of course, I would have possibly missed some of the news.
But essentially he had injuries and lost his place, but he did what the club wanted when it wanted. There will be no negativity.
And yet, as far as I can see, the hatred and negativity continue to grow. When it comes to a head, the media condemns it, but its own attacks on players and coaches inspire it, because the media considers negativity to be smart for business.
However, football is a gamble. Take Manchester United: their FA Cup win last season and League Cup win the previous season was considered unimportant given their eighth position in the league. And the media attacked Antony Santos (it cost £85. 6 million), Romeo Lavia, Marc Cucurella and Mason Mount, in the same way that they attacked Mykhailo Mudryk and Moises Caicedo at Chelsea.
But then the site that went out of its way to paint those players as chess also went after Kai Havertz. Havertz was Arsenal’s second-highest scorer last season, but more so, his goals basically came towards the end of the season, after getting used to the team around him.
The fact is that some players join a team with the instruction to continue doing what they did on their previous team. Sometimes they are asked to do something new. And we ask the other team members to do something new to welcome the new team member.
All of those things require a little bit of adaptation, either on the part of the player or the rest of the team, as we saw last season with Havertz. But of course, some enthusiasts and at most all the media do not give players time to adapt. Results are demanded immediately, and that doesn’t happen most of the time.
And indeed, with Havertz, statistics are almost never presented in terms of when he scored in the season — just the total number of goals he scored.
In his first 16 games he scored one goal. But in his last 20 games for Arsenal he has scored ten goals. Showing, as if to prove it, that some players can take some time to dominate their new teammates.
But waiting isn’t something the media thinks they can do because they want new headlines every day.
The ones I find most appalling are the old players like Neville, Carragher and others. They don’t know how to get a rat out of a piece of cheese and yet they communicate a lot of nonsense. Maybe they pay them verbally. The “real” journalists are no better and claim to know what happens in the clubs. That bald guy from Sky comes to mind. Show them a chart with 3 columns and five rows and they would faint.
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