By Walter Broeckx
I don’t know what is the next step after madness in English. Bonkers? Crazy?
I think someone has to invent a new word to describe the craziness that has taken over at Fick FUFA headquarters over the years.
If you thought that after having had two summers with no rest at all Alexis would now have a summer off in 2017 as there would be no Copa America and no World Cup….think again. Because to the delight of the money makers and dubious decisions the Confederations cup will be held in Russia during next summer.
So from June 17th till July 2nd Alexis might be once again not resting but playing football at the highest level. And as the summer in 2018 we have the World cup again we can expect that the season 2017-2018 will start earlier than usual and so….we will not be with Alexis at the start of that season.
If you think that is already bad then let’s talk about Özil. Because as World Champions Germany will also have to play in that ridiculous tournament called Confederations cup. So when the season 2017-2018 starts we will once again be without both Alexis and Özil.
So for the second season in a row we will be without our top 2 players at the start of the season and will have them back ready around the end of August with already 3 or 4 matches being played.
Is Untold the only website that finds this ridiculous? For a long time it looked like that. Even in Arsenal Belgium circles I am a lonely voice when it comes to condemning those bloody internationals. But slowly I notice a few people starting to open their eyes. Maybe this article might help a bit. But for some there is apparently a need to wave with national flags.
Anyway, it seems that other people are also getting a bit fed up with these summer tournaments. And not a small name this time. The president of the German Football Federation DFB, Mr. Reinhard Grindel has said that if it was down to him the Confederations Cup should be abolished.
He said: “It would be a good signal to stop this. The top clubs in Europe have to give their players out for this tournament and they are rightly worried about the work load for their top players. They have every reason to be concerned”.
Mr. Grindel said that the top players nowadays are getting too much work load and this causes too many of them to get injured.
Germany will play Chile in this tournament so Alexis and Özil might be playing each other.
But there might be some relief if the only national team coach who looks further than his own nose, does what he says he is planning to do. Joachim Löw.
Löw has already said that he might consider the Confederations Cup as a chance to go with a young team and not with the best team he could pick.
So there might be a chance that Löw leaves Özil in England and he might get a good rest this summer.
It looks as if the Germans are the only ones who have and use some common sense when it comes to international football. Löw also left Özil at home to play a meaningless friendly and to play San Marino a few weeks ago. A gesture well appreciated by Arsenal and Wenger.
He might have a few strange habits this Joachim Löw but he surely seems to be the only manager in international football that really takes care of his players and keeps the best of interests in mind of those players and the clubs who play their wages.
Of course we will have to wait how the corrupt FUFA will react to this blasphemy. Imagine the world champion telling them to stuff their tournaments where the sun never shines. That will not go down well at their headquarters I can imagine.
Maybe Mr. Grindel from the DFB should go one step further. Maybe he should make sure that the Confederations cup will no longer be played. I think they can do it if they would have the balls to go for it.
They could maybe just tell FUFA they will not come at all. A confederations cup without the world champion would be worth nothing. But probably FUFA will have a stick behind the door by banning them from the world cup itself? And that might be one bridge too far even for the DFB who I can imagine would want to retain their world cup in 2018.
So if the option of not going at all is impossible, they could of course make FUFA look ridiculous and send out an U19 team to this tournament. They could claim all the other players are injured or sick and those are the only ones who can be send out to Russia.
Of course things will not change overnight but at least I feel a bit happy that the president of the current world champions is standing up for the rights and the rest of the players and their clubs. It was about time someone did apart from Untold. And Wenger.
And the more I read about Löw and his intelligent way of handling his players the more I would fall for the idea of having him as our manager one day in the future when Wenger will be gone.
Arsenal v Southampton: the preview, plus Bellerin’s quick recovery
How a referee can bend a match to fix the result: the inside story
And then suddenly football is not that important anymore
Supporting is the name of the game
Arsenal – Bournemouth: the travels, the catering, the laughter and fun
Arsenal Bournemouth 3-1: the view from block 110
After the victory: Showaddywaddy lives and the football journalist who writes 10 articles a day
The idiocy of staring at a TV screen hanging on the wall in some bar in some city with a beer at the table, watching a game that happened to be on when you walked in, which gets replaced by another one, and then another one, pretty soon all these hanging screens on walls showing this endless game will be showing nothing else except the corpse of football game by game, with nobody sitting there interested enough to tell you who they are watching, why they are watching.
The Euros this summer were a million miles away from showing a game where you could live again for the dream of football.
Thanks for the article Walter.
Bloody hell. That’s unfortunate news. I actually have some faith in Low and Germany generally to show sense here. They’ll hopefully send a mix of their Olympic team and whatever young players have burst through since (never short of them)
Chile…that’s another story. If Sanchez could be trusted he himself would surely make his excuses and say ‘enough’s enough, I have given so much already, will give more on the future and need to protect myself and have one summer off.’ What would the repercussions be? Does he need any extra tournament experience? Unfortunately, I fully expect he’ll be selected and play. A bad joke.
To be a successful national football team manager is not a guarantee that that same manager will become successful at a big professional football club like Arsenal if he goes there. For the two are different balls game. And moreover, who said Mr Wenger is leaving Arsenal soon. It might take another 3 years if this season becomes successful for him and us before he may considers retiring or take a Sabbatical leave from the game.
In as much as Joachim Low, the Germany national football team manager in collaboration with the DFB chief – Mr Grindel will like to kill the Fifa Confederation Cup tournament from continuing holding, I don’t think Fifa, and their Confederation units will allow their pre-World Cup tournament to be killed. Because even the players who will participate in this tournament and the countries they are representing are looking forward to play in the Con’ Cup tournament and they have never said anything contrary to the holding of the event. Should we have a Poll amongst the players who had played in this tournament before and those ones who are now going for this matches to know their minds on this subject before advancing any call to terminate the tournament from holding in future?
The Late Nigerian Super Eagles coach – Steven Keshi boasted of winning the Confederation Cup soon after he coached the Super Eagles to victory in the Afcon tournament in South Africa. But I don’t know why our Super Eagles caved in to Spain and Uruguay in matches to crash out of the tournament. We the soccer loving Nigerians and the supporters of the Super Eagles were earnestly looking forward then to Steven Keshi and the Super Eagles to deliver the Con’ Cup to us which we consider to be 2nd in status to the Fifa World Cup, globally.
I believe when the time comes for the Confederation Cups matches to be played in 2018 in Russia, and our Ozil and Sanchez are arjugde by Arsenal fitness coach and medical personnel to be fatigued and thus it’s medically unsafe for them to play any game at the Con’ Cup. I believe Le Prof will stamp his feet on the ground to telli our big duo to forgo taking part in the tournament to enabled them have a good rest ahead of our 2017/18 season campaign.
However, because of his unrivalled patriotism to play for Chile if he’s fit and even if not at 100% fitness level, our workaholic Sanchez, the superman Arsenal player may contest any decision by Le Prof to bar him from playing at the Con’ Cup matches. In that case, what do we do?.
OT and not OT.
I want the Gunners not to allow southampton to take them to any marathon game in our ELC game against them at the Ems tonight. They should deal with Southampton within regulation time by hitting them very hard where it will pain them most (knockout from the competition) and take them to the cleaners.
Because of our impeding match away to the West Hammers, we won’t have the luxury of any extra time to play in this ELC game between them and us tonight due to the fact that some of our senior Gunners who will play in this match will need an extra hours in the coming days to rest before they’ll be on the road to WH.
On a different topic,
FA has ruled that Mourinho has been given a 1 match ban effecitve immediately for the latest outburst against a referee. Given that this was his 2nd offence within a month and the third in the year, one would’ve thought that the FA would have ramped up the punishment, but no. He is free to resume his duties after serving his ban in the league cup game this week?
Surprised? But would you expect anything different from the FA. On another news, apparently in 2003 the FA pulled the plug on all funding for the Child Protection scheme and also bullied it’s staff into not talking with the researchers.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38145061