- Vendettas and short tempers. How chairmen run football clubs
- Fifa accused of wholesale corruption, but the English media really don’t want to know
By Tony Attwood
I always liked Edu as a player at Arsenal, but also sometimes had the feeling that there was something “different” about him. He, sort of, had a reputation as a player that seemed way above playing 79 games in four years (2001-5) and his coming back to the club with Arteta felt like a good idea.
Except, there was all that stuff at the start about him coming to Arsenal in 2000 only for us all to be told that his Portuguese passport was a fake, and it was then I began to wonder, what sort of person has a fake passport? I mean, did he know it was a fake, or did he believe that the guy in the corner shop who passed it to him under the counter was actually an official of the government? Obviously, I don’t know, but it just seems strange that Edu might not have known his second passport wasn’t the real thing. I mean, why not always travel on one passport?
Of course, I made that “guy in the corner shop” bit up, and I have no idea how he came to have a fake passport, but it has always worried me how he didn’t know. After all if he knew, then he was trying to con everyone – the border officials, the club, the fans, the UK government… If he didn’t know, how could he not have known?
Now maybe lots of people in Brazil have fake passports – I wouldn’t know. But I wondered, why bother? After all, whatever the ins and outs of the affair, he got it sorted because he played for Arsenal. So why not get it sorted earlier?
Google AI (not the most reliable source of information, I must admit) says that “It appears that the forgery came to light only because Edu, who had entered on a Brazilian passport for his medical and planned to do the same on Tuesday, decided to use his Portuguese papers when he saw the queue for non-EU passport control at Heathrow.” Well maybe. Except that it would look a bit odd on the computer system that “Portuguese Edu” hadn’t actually left Brazil. But then, as I’ve suggested, I’ve never been involved in the fake passportery business, although I think I did just invent “passportery” as a word so I guess I might be guilty of fake Englishity.
So Edu’s move to Arsenal was suspended until he remembered that his dad was part Italian and so he could have an EU passport that way (or so I am told) and Edu got one too, and joined Arsenal.
And yet the strange trail of events that surrounded him, continued to dog him and his family. He came onto the pitch on 20 January 2001, replacing Freddie Ljungberg on 46 minutes, but only lasted 16 minutes before Dennis Bergkamp came on to replace him (that is Edu).
All told Edu played four games that season, including the – home defeat to Middlesbrough by 0-3 in which he scored an own goal. It was Arsenal’s worst defeat against the club in 21 years and 24 games.
Of course it can be argued that this is all a bit unfair as when he got it right he could be superb, and I doubt that many people were negative about his appointment as technical director at Arsenal in July 2019, nor his promotion to Sporting Director in November 2022. And indeed, some of us were a bit pissed off when almost two years to the day after that appointment he simply resigned. Not really the best thing to do to the club that stood behind him all the time he was getting his passport mess sorted.
But Edu is Edu and he became Global Head of Football for the Marinakis group of clubs, including Nottingham Forest. This group of clubs includes not only Forest but also Olympiacos in Grece, and Rio Ave in Portugal. It is reported that the group will also soon include Vasco da Gama in Brazil.
So there is Edu’s life in football… except it does seem to be a little bit unfortunate at times – as with his having a fake passport and all that stuff. And it is a fact that multi-club ownership itself can be a bit of a problem, as we saw with Crystal Palace not being able to play in the Europa League having won the FA Cup..
As you may recall, John Textor owned part of Palace and the majority of Lyon – both of which were about to appear in the Europa League. Uefa said no, Palace appealed, but Cas said the rules were clear, and Textor was influential in both clubs when Uefa made its decision.
Now Nottingham Forest have themselves been down this road of questioning multi-ownership rules, so maybe it is not all over yet. But with Uefa you never can tell. And maybe that’s also true of Edu. What next? You never can tell.
.
