Even by the megalomaniac standards of modern Premiership soccer, this allegation, if true about former Chelsea player William Gallas, is astonishing:
Chelsea say they sold William Gallas because he threatened to score an own goal if he was selected for their first game of the season.
The Stamford Bridge club have released a statement explaining their reasons for allowing the French defender to join Arsenal on transfer deadline day.
Gallas, 29, allegedly refused to play again for the Blues.
Chelsea claim he said he would score an own goal if he was forced to play against Manchester City on 20 August.
This story has had the amazing effect of making me feel a tincture of sympathy for the charmless Chelsea football manager, Jose Mourinho.
The market for footballers and other sports remains a strange one. Footballers have, in the space of under 50 years, gone from the position of being treated almost like serfs with capped wages to swaggering characters thinking they are able to command whatever salaries they want, on any terms. But I suspect that this process is hitting the buffers. There has been a great boom in professional soccer and the surrounding business over the past two decades but one suspects that that has now reached a sort of plateau
Football has to compete with other forms of entertainment. The less-than-stellar performance of England in the World Cup, coupled with lingering sourness and the antics of certain players, may have sated the public appetite for shelling out vast sums for a season ticket to a game. And when a player becomes so deluded about his importance to a club that he actually threatens to damage it by scoring own goals and so on, then he has to be pushed out. Chelsea had no alternative. if this guy had been a bond dealer at a bank and had threatened to hurt the company if it failed to do what he wanted, that person would probably be sued to an inch of his life.
So what’s the problem? You describe the workings of a free market, and what’s more the workings of a free market so small not to over-attract the bossy state we now live in. Personally, as a City fan I wish we could have benefitted from a Gallas own goal, but the subsequent win over Arsenal has raised my spirits sufficiently to forget the Chelsea defeat.
Lingering sourness? Bit harsh to focus on Graeme when he hasn’t even been managing of late.
So? Just because something happens in a free market, that does not make it reasonable behaviour.
Had the scrote done what he threatened, the club would probably have had grounds to sue the crap out of him. In fact, I wonder if it could be regarded as ‘criminal damage’ to intentionally score an own goal? It would certainly be a violation of trust and it would constitute ‘damage’ to his employer just as surely as throwing a company computer out a window. I would be curious to hear what any lawyers out there think of that notion.
One advantage of USian football. A touchback or safety cannot occur without the involvement of a member of the opposing team.
I’d have to disagree with the background of this story, Gallas wanted to leave and it looks like his current behaviour was the only way out for him. If i was a manager, the last thing i’d want is a player who doesn’t want to play for the team, no matter how professional the player, it has to affect his game.
Hmm. Not sure the players’ wages are driven by season ticket holders’ revenues per se, I’ve always understood that the purpose of footie was about driving forward the sales of coloured sugar-water (Sunny Delight), ground up pigs ears and noses (Wall’s Sausages et al) and other similarly crappy byproducts of the food industry to the unwashed masses, for which they seem to have an inexhaustible appetite, gawd bless ’em.
pete, as Perry said, Gallas’ behaviour is hardly a model of someone who respects things like contracts, rules, and trust: all things that are vital to a free market. And anyway, just because I am an ardent supporter of capitalism, does not mean that I have to admire or not condemn the antics of some individuals and firms. In fact companies can often be serial offenders in demanding privileges, subsidies, handouts from the state, and the like.
for a group of people who pride themselves on their ability to factcheck the msm, you’re looking pretty credulous here.
chelsea are building up quite a history for smear tactics and double-dealing and given they’ve bitterly got rid of gallas to a major rival, this kind of story is no surprise.
I’m not a fan of either team, but it’s notable that there’s no similar type of story emanating from arsenal about ashley cole (who has, if anything, behaved even worse than gallas).
Matt, I have no illusions about Chelsea, their asswipe of a manager, their ahem, dubiously enriched owner, or indeed most of the people at the top of football. But to make such allegations about a player, the club must be pretty certain of its facts, since if they are not, they are extremely libellous, and Gallas would be justified to sue them for massive damages. Accusing a player of being willing to subvert his own team for gain is about as bad as it gets, and I suspect that even a club as rich as Chelsea would not have made such allegations lightly.
Can you seriously believe anything that comes out of the Chelsea spin machine? Abramovich is a spiv, Mourinho is a narcissist and Kenyon is a two faced money grubbing twat. There was no reason for them to make this public (even if it were true) except to shit all over Gallas’s career at the Arsenal. They were putting down a marker: don’t mess with us. If Gallas sues and wins a million quid, so what? It’s small change to them, and they will have made their point.
Chelsea isn’t a football club, it’s a cancer on the game.
Oh I think it’s quite easy to believe that it’s mostly made-up. Clubs routinely spread outright lies to journalists (just read transfer rumours on any given day) and make up all kinds of stuff. Plus, this is the club with 120 page dossiers on Arsene Wenger, that’s just accused Ken Bates of racism for saying “shyster”, and which suddenly secured the transfer of a young player (Mikel) after he’d already signed for ManUtd.
Now, I’m sure Gallas is hardly blemish-free in this whole hilarious mess – he did after all refuse to go on their pre-season tour – but I really doubt that everything Chelsea are saying about him is true. Give him a few weeks, and there’ll be counter-accusations, I’m sure.
They are very entertaining, Chelsea, but bonkers.
I’d be pretty hesitant about anything footballers or football clubs ‘allege’.
This is a profession that makes politicians look upright and decent.
Of course this story isn’t true.
Chelsea’s senior employees are serial liars and shits of the highest order. Mourinho claimed to be in Portugal scouting young players when the allegations first came to light that he and Kenyon had illegally met Ashley Cole. That was a lie. Mourinho lied about what he saw the referee and Frank Rikjaard get up to at the Nou Camp in Barcelona. Kenyon lied about meeting Eriksson, until he was found out. They are serial, chronic liars.
Within hours of the Gallas/Cole transfer taking place Mourinho was moaning at Kenyon letting Gallas go behind his back, selling him against Mourinho’s wishes. Within 48 hours Chelsea put out nasty allegations about Gallas. Well, that doesn’t add up to me. The only constant here is Chelsea’s pathological need to always have the last word, always slur those who cross them, always trample down on those who don’t bend to their will.
Kohn K’s right, Chelsea is a cancer on the game.
pete, you ought to disclose to unsuspecting readers that you support Arsenal. (How is the new ground, by the way?)
Agreed with pretty much with most commenters say about the sheer awfulness of Chelsea. The arrogance and petulance of their over-rated manager, the smears, etc, do detract mightily from some pretty nifty football on the park. Chelsea is a formidable team but lacks the greatness, the flair of, say, the Spurs Double-winners in 1961 and the magic of Busby’s 50s or 60s Manchester United. They are not yet as formidable as Liverpool under Bob Paisley and Dalgliesh. They remind me of Leeds in the early 70s: hard, efficient and unlovable.
Johnathan Pearce
I am more than happy to disclose my residency of Goonerland in this. And the new stadium is lovely, thanks very much. The seats are wide and upholstered, I’ve never been to any stadium with so much room, and (most importantly) six pints can be pulled in a couple of seconds. Way to go. My seat view is here. Scouserdave was all over it just prior to completion.
It’s not just Gooners who have a problem with Chelsea, however. Their ex-owner Ken Bates recently described the new owners as ‘Siberian shits’ or some such thing, after alleging that Chelsea tapped up some young Leeds Utd players.
Crystal Palace Chairman Simon Jordan had a few things to say not so long ago about Clesea too, apparently, in his Guardian column:
The closest I’ve come to losing it with a journalist was in 2002, after London’s Evening Standard, who’d always had great access and cooperation from us, started producing a string of barbed, personal piss takes.
I decided that if they wanted to write this stuff, fine, but they weren’t going to do it on our premises, so I withdrew their accreditation. The sports editor’s reaction was this: instead of calling me, he phoned our shirt sponsor to suggest they reduced payments to us because they’d be getting less exposure in the Standard. Then he warned me that banning Standard journalists would have a negative effect on Palace’s results. I asked him what the hell he was talking about, and he implied that if I obstructed his journalists and restricted his press access, the type of coverage they’d be giving us would have a negative effect on morale.
So where is this guy now? Four years on, he’s the top PR man at Cuntski, a club with a reputation for obstructing journalists and restricting press access. PR Week says ‘Simon Greenberg is about to embark on a major charm offensive’ in football, to boost Cuntski’s image. Stand back, and watch him go.
One of the few things uniting most fans of most clubs throughout the land is their hatred of Chelsea. It’s clearly not a jealousy of a history of success as they have none. It’s their clear lack of class. That lack of class has often been articulated through lies and (in my opinion) means they have lost the right to be believed at first glance.
Six pints? Good grief man, I may become a Gooner myself!
I wonder if it’s such a good idea for Gallas to piss off his Russian owner in such a manner. Maybe he should check under the duvet for his favourite horse’s head every morning now …
Good for Gallas. He’s an employee who holds all the cards. When an employer hold all the cards, which is most of the time for most people, an employee has to put up with all kinds of poor treatment. Chelsea’s whining is pathetic.
pete, you sound like a leftie. Employers rarely hold “all the cards” in a free market economy since most workers have the option of leaving a firm if they are really labouring under a shit of a boss or are frustrated at the lack of opportunities to progress.
The days when employers “hold all the cards” is during times of very high unemployment, when people will put up with anything to get work, or if the sole employer is the State.
Cool. What technology are they using? A couple of other sailing instructors in my club invented this and of course the rest of us sailing instructors diligently helped with the testing. As I recall in our early phases of testing we were drawing a pint in about 3 seconds. The market version is down to 2 seconds.
Check out this video.
Forgive me for an ignorant Yank, but is an “own goal” the act of kicking the ball into your own team’s goal?
Yes
Johnathan Pearce,
Football has at least one practise that I would not consider as free market. That being that managers can only talk to players after they’ve asked permission from the current employer.
A friend of mine who worked as a lawyer for UEFA put it well. He said football (or any sport, for that matter) will never become a completely free market as each club does not have an interest in driving their competitors out of business.
Tim, I am not sure if that is entirely right. A company may obviously be glad if he has driven a competitor out of business, but then economics in a free society is not zero sum. A firm wins new customers and forces a rival either out of business or forces it to change its products to give what customers want. Everyone gains.
In a league of football clubs or whatever, the people organising that clearly realise that eventually, if a team wins all the time, hogs the best players and intimidates its rivals, then the league will suffer as fans either stop watching games and do something else with their spare cash. Fanatical Chelsea or ManUnited fans may support their team come what may, but those fans who tend to support football only if matches are interesting will stay away. I sense that may be happening now.
So it is in the interests of a league to encourage a level playing field, by limiting the number of foreign players, say, or by punishing wrongdoers by deducting points, and so on.
The sneerers will say that such leagues are not examples of a pure market and hence we libertarians are wrong. But a league, which is not a state, but voluntary group of likeminded people, is a product of a group of people who come together to enjoy an activity and set their own rules to ensure that activity remains enjoyable. So it is entirely possible, in a free society, for organisations to develop that impose certain restrictions on their members for the good of the whole.
Sooner or later, if pressures on a sports league become intolerable, you get things like “breakaway” leagues, which then stand or fall depending on how entertaining they are. The history of cricket in recent years offers an instructive example.