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By Walter Broeckx
First about the title: this is a somewhat own version of the famous quotes that are used in the comic strips series Asterix and Obelix from the hand of René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo. A comic series about a village of indomitable Gauls that resist Roman occupation. One of the ever returning lines in this series is that one of the Gauls says about the Romans and their (at times somewhat strange) behaviour : Silly people, those Romans. This explanation just in case some take the title too serious. And feels insulted or so. If so, sorry. Because I do think some have just played being silly.
Well a lot of waves have been made in English football yesterday. At times like this you would need a real Englishman to give his thoughts on to those matters. But as Tony still is finding himself standing upside down for the moment you will have to do with the Untold foreigner view on things.
First let me start with Harry Redknapp. I don’t know how the rules are in England but I really don’t think that I can go to the bank and open an account on my dogs name. And as I don’t have a dog I never really tried to do it so maybe I could be wrong on this. But as I did opened a few accounts on the name of my children I know from those days that I did have to give some kind of evidence that they existed. So opening a bank account and name it to a dog is well something that sounds do(d)/(g)gy to me. A normal person would not do this. Unless he maybe has something to hide for someone.
Opening a bank account in another country is something that I am perfectly allowed to do in my country. I could go to Monaco and open an account there. The only thing that the Belgian tax law is saying about it, is that I must let this know to them. So the opening is perfectly legal but hiding the account is an offense. Each year we have to declare (and this is literally the last thing we have to declare on our tax form), if we have an account in another country or not. It is a declaration of honour as it is called in my country. So if you lie about that you are not an honourable person anymore. Apparently Redknapp didn’t tell about the account so according to Belgium tax laws he is a person lacking any honour.
Something that I found very strange in this trial is the fact that it was a jury who had to decide on this. In my country such behaviour is sentenced not by a jury but by the judges themselves. I think in such cases it would be 3 judges who decide if there was any guilt or not. And well most of the time those judges are not that easily influenced by people who can talk nice and make jokes and are a bit famous. They look in the files, try to see if laws were broken or not and then judge accordingly yes or no. Mind you not many cases come to court as far as I know in my country as most of those cases are settled with an agreement outside the court room.
I certainly liked the way how the defence pleaded that Arry was not as smart as people thought he was. The shameless way he tried to believe the people that he could hardly read or write is something that will follow him in the future. And this for a man that is supposed to write (or has written?) a column in The Sun or whatever newspaper it was. This shows that he is a liar to the public or that he doesn’t write the column himself and this makes him a pretender. Oh, yes he is the great pretender….
But the verdict of the jury was ‘not guilty’ and so Harry can go free. The question that I now have is : will the court go after the dog now and try to put him on trial? Because did Rosie fill in her tax from in the right way?
Moving on to Capello although this is only one small step on the Tax mans ladder. Because as Tony in earlier articles pointed out this Capello was not a totally unknown man to the Italian version of the Tax man himself. So who better to come after Capello then a not found guilty tax evasion person himself. Maybe this is somehow written down in the job description to become an England manager? Maybe you must have had troubles with the tax man before they take you serious at the FA?
Now about the sacking of Capello itself. I really cannot understand the whole idea unless it was a set up. Just imagine if the FA wanted to take the armband away from Terry. Ok, if you would be on the FA-board how would you work this out?
Would you just go and make it public like the FA did or would you first call Capello and make it a joint statement? And suppose if Capello for some reason did not agree with the taking the armband away from Terry. Wouldn’t it be smart of all parties involved to sit down in a meeting room and discuss about it and to find a solution that is acceptable for all parties.
But by acting like they did, the FA made it look as if Capello had nothing to say about the national team at all. And so I can understand him being angry about it. And all this could have been avoided if they would have gotten the wisdom to first talk with each other, take the same point of view on this matter and then come out with a joint public statement. Everybody, except maybe Terry, would have been happy. And for Terry it would be business as usual because it wasn’t the first time he has been stripped of the armband before. So in a way he is used to it.
So I do think that the whole thing was just a set up to make Capello angry and to force him out of the door. Maybe the FA had hoped that Capello would have stayed on until after the European championship but the Italian didn’t want to play that game. I think the idea was to make sure that Capello would stop after the European championship and then get Arry in place. But the Italian preferred the money right now and let the FA choke themselves with the problems they have caused themselves.
The main thing for the FA would be to learn from those things. But can we really expect people in charge of football to learn anything at all? Because if they would have had the capacity to learn anything at all…then why would they be in football?
So who will be Englands next manager? I put my money on a dog called Rosie and his assistant The Anfield Cat. No better duo to run the English national team after the silly way the FA acted. And besides the dog has already a bank account it seems. Somewhere in Monaco. Arry and Milan know the details…
Lessons on English tax law:
1. You are indeed required to declare foreign earnings in your annual tax return, assuming you are required to make one. We have a strange situation that you only have to send one in if the HMRC has asked you to, since for many people, they have one employer/source of income which is taxed at source. I know this as I have to declare foreign earnings on income in France, even though I have paid some tax in France on it.
2. There is no requirement to call your account by your name, so long as the bank have identification of you, your address etc etc. The bank will certainly have known that Mr Redknapp opened that Monaco account. Many rich people know to their cost that they need to operate through third parties, nominees etc etc due to the intrusions of the Press (often resulting in share price movements detrimental to intended actions). I would go and interview a few rich people before you come to judgement about why people don’t use their own name for everything. Perhaps Ken Bates wouldn’t be the best person to interview though…..
3. I had a very good friend at school who was badly dyslexic but was the sharpest economist I ever met in my life. His handwriting was almost illegible. That would not stop him becoming good at dictation and getting a secretary to type it up. If you have ever worked in business the past 15 years you will see a huge disparity between older folks who still value traditional typists and those of us who type faster than we can write, so have no need for that service. Harry Redknapp may or may not write his own articles, I don’t know, but you don’t know whether he dictates them or not. I suggest you ring up the Editor of The Sun and see if you can wheedle the truth out of them……..
What you are saying is that you had made your mind up about this before the case started and haven’t changed your mind based on the evidence presented. You would have been struck off the jury at the start and are therefore perhaps not best placed to comment after the event. Complex though that may be for a simple Belgian to understand………
The key questions you have not asked is whether the account was only ever used once or whether a lot of other money was funnelled through it. If it was one payment never again, I’m not quite frankly surprised he forgot to tell his accountant about it, especially if it were opened 9 months before the next tax return. Yes he should be fined for that, but you have no idea whether or not that account is a serial criminal in operation or just one payment. You don’t and that’s that. I’m amazed you can consider yourself able to be a referee with such a biased approach to evidence……….
Nothing I have said has anything to do with Arsene Wenger, Arsenal or Spurs. It has to do with how you evaluate evidence.
I put my money on the next EU President not being a Belgian. I wish the current one wasn’t, but I can’t get him sacked……….
Walter clearly its embarassing for the country as a whole.
Quite a few of the England team would not get their place playing for Arsenal as we as a club have morale standards that we enforce.
Off course Harry is a better manager with 1 FA cup to his name than Capello with so many leagues and cups and european cups.
And the press well they judge every England team as if its 1970 and we should defend what rightfuly ours ….our world cup and nothing else will do. They do not base the expectations on the previous tournaments what so ever.
Add all that to the fact that Ref’s allow defenders and players in general all year long to get away with crap that will not be tolerated in a world cup results in the players not knowing how to play along with behave.
Gotta blame the managers though at the end of the day it could never be the FAs fault…..
Thanks for this information Rhys. A few things I didn’t know.
About the jury system: I’m not a big fan of it to be honest. In Belgium it is only used in murder cases or capital crimes is the correct term I think. But I would be a lousy juror that is something I could not deny. Thank God I was never ever asked to sit in a jury.
But I do think you would be amazed on how unbiased I can bee on the football field. From the moment I start the game there is not team A against team B but a yellow team against a green team. I once even had to check at the end of the game that the yellow team was team A because otherwise I would put the score wrong at the scoresheet.
Oh and do let me join you in the hope that the next EU president not being a Belgian. Do you know how happy some of us over here were when we got rid of him? 😉
I rate/rated him as high as Anne rated the press in their report: -F.
The big countries needed a good mop to swipe the floor with and he was the best mop they could get.
Redgooner,
Apart from my Dog and Cat proposal if they want an English manager that seems to be capable of producing a team that actually can play football a bit : take that Rodgers from Swansea.
Now someone will tell me he is Welsh I guess???
And I must say that the press outside England they look at it in a slightly amused way and asking themselves : how stupid have they acted. It doesn’t matter who was right or wrong, they made a mess of it.
Look, i love my dog and willing to open an account on her name. But
1)what’s the need to open an account in another country? Especially dogs don’t need that much amount of money until it’s a trust or something. But starting a trust is whole lot different than opening an account again why in another country?
2)why not tell involved authority about it?
Critic did the dog have to go in person and open the bank account and show his ID or passport lol
Walter–I’m glad I finally read some good sense on Capello’s resignation. Most things I’ve read (BBC and Guardian–I don’t really like the Guardian, but it’s not a redtop, and the Times charges!) tell the story as if the FA royally screwed up. Seems to me you are right, that they knew exactly what they were doing.
The need to consult with the manager before demoting the captain is obvious; the FA’s failure to do so suggests forethought. They have deliberately made his position untenable. The benefits are clear if they wanted him gone before Euro 2012, since they don’t have to go through the bother of sacking and compensating Capello. After all, it was “his” decision. Thanks for calling it straight, Walter.
Walter. I think Rodgers is Irish … at least Northern Irish so he sort of qualifies. Just signed a new contract at Swansea. Out of interest, there’s a princely sum of four English managers in the Premier League. No wonder English football’s in such a state…7 Scots managers.
The fa have the final say on all matters of team selection;this is written into every England managers contract.The fa wanted the Terry matter dealt with this month but as soon as the court case was put back to july they had to act;they did not want this issue hanging over the squad.If Capello had any sense he would have never reinstated Terry in the first place.The England manager should be English;i don’t give a monkeys what he has or hasn’t won.God’the Spanish,French,Germans,Italians or Dutch would never dream of appointing a foreign manager..There is only one candidate ,Redknapp,who this site is convinced will bankrupt Tottenham.Did you know last summer he spent 5 million and made sales of over 30? They are not far behind us financially;once they have a new stadium watch them overtake us as they have a much more dynamic CEO in Levy than we have in Ivan,one who backs his manager AND posts a profit.
LOL @ Basil
Thank you for that bit of humour.
Roy Hodgson probably has the best credentials to be the next English-England manager.
Unfortunately for “Woy” he’s not flavour of the month.
I certainly prefer that Highbury squirrel to Rosie. Can surely move faster. Who knows if Rosie is a bloodhound or labrador. And the Anfield Cat is fat.
Walter, Rodgers is Northern Irish so I don’t think the current xenophobia will allow him even if he is perfect! He’d be good for Arsenal once Arsene steps down though!
I hope that ‘arry gets the job so that once and for all, all can see just how deluded and incompetent the English footballing establishment is (from players and management / coaching to administration)! I recall all of this similar clammer when everyone wanted “King Kev” Keegan and that was an utter disaster.
I for one hope that those arrogant English fans of us and media get exactly what they deserve with ‘arry, utter failure and further embarrassment! Bring on the Euros and the World Cup!
I’m now going to put a bit of cash on the Spuds to miss-out on top 4! Lol!
An English speaking manager is important for the team for communication purposes, but their nationality should not matter at all. England has a bright future with a lot of good quality young players coming – Wilshere, Ox, theo, Gibbs on Arsenal alone, plus Sturridge, Joe Hart, Ashley Young, Welbeck, and Rooney for a couple more years.
Problem will be in defense though, since England is more focused on crushing tackles than actually playing defense.
Here’s a good article on Redknapp ‘darling of the English press’ : http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7556217/harry-redknapp-fabio-capello-future-english-national-football-team
@Walter:
Perhaps this one was “settled with an agreement outside the court room” as well 🙂
“But the Italian preferred the money right now and let the FA choke themselves with the problems they have caused themselves.”
Who does Capello think he is? “Brian Clough. Brian Howard Clough.”
@ 9jagunnerdoc, haha!The introduction of the cat was more interesting than Suarez though.
If we allowed to have a serious discussion about the England manager and we HAD to pick an Englishman, I would prefer Roy Hodgson. But the press have been pushing their man on the inside for over a year now so I think anyone but dirty ‘arry would be given a torrid time.
If however this situation descends into a greater circus, I would prefer that Pearce be given the job permanantly, with Andy Townsend as his assistant. I would want Paul Merson and Ian Wright as his backroom staff for added entertainment.
I think we can leave the serious business of football to Arsenal.
Give arry the England job if that is what the world wants. He is a Keegan waiting to happen. At the spuds, he is surrounded by joe Jordan, les Ferdinand, Kevin bond, tony parks, tim sherwood, Clive Allen and probably others. Let’s see how he does with the coaching team England would force on him. The man is for a considerable part, a media based myth, like his beloved Scottie Parker , just check his stats!
Agree that Capello was set up, but i am convinced he was set up willingly , wit h his full knowledge,he is an intelligent man. He was told to bring order and discipline to the team, he tried, they did not like it. He knows the england players are far from a team and surely, wanted out? North south Manc scousers black white issues everywhere.
I do not rate the current English managers, including arry, if I were to choose an Englishman, it would be hoddle, a good record, played good football, looked beyond the hype with gazza, and sacked over religious beliefs, isn’t that illegal?
One more thing, I expect some very spuds friendly refs in their gamescoming months, including a few appearances by mike dean in their games, just hope we don’t get him when we play them, but I fear the worst. They will not be allowed to win the title but compensation may go their way.
@ Mandy Dodd, I agree with you, Capello was brought in to be an authoritarian after Maclaren’s pally act with the boys. The problem is that the FA themselves are more out of control than the players, which Capello found out and grew tired of. However I must say that I questioned his judgement when he chose to keep John Terry as captain after the WC, even after the player publicly undermined him during the WC and it was left to Lampard the following day to account for Terry’s actions.
John Terry is a devisive, amoral and shameful man that cares more for himself than taking pride in being a key national representative in the most widely loved sport in England. Like you say, with all the division in the squad, Terry was not and never would be the man to bring the squad together and get them working as a unit. He simply does not have those leadership qualities. Scott Parker to me is dirty ‘arry’s natural choice, but I think Joe Hart has what it takes to be captain and I would see him as a fresh start that the next generation could galvernise around.
I try not to think or talk too much about the inept FA, because they really make my blood boil. Capello’s tenure should of ended in 2010 and in countless ways it is their fault that we are in this debarcle now.