By Tony Attwood
This little piece contains brief details about five things that I think are indeed wrong with football, but which most people in the media seem to find ok – except when it involves knocking Arsenal of course.
1: Drugs in football? Who cares?
Drugs testing is treated as irrelevant nonsense in football, especially English football, largely because of the behaviour of Uefa. And Liverpool. And Man U. As a result of the latter club’s approach to player education, Phil Jones has been banned for two matches and Daley Blind fined by Uefa after the Manchester United pair were found guilty of breaching the governing body’s doping regulations after the Europa League final in May.
Jones was fined for abusing a doping control officer after being asked to attend for drug testing. Blind for refusing to co-operate with the drugs test. He was fined 5,000 euros – the equivalent of 1p to anyone on regular wages.
Manchester United have been fined 10,000 euros for infringements of Appendix B (17) of the anti-doping regulations, which say ‘the teams are responsible for ensuring that the players drawn to undergo doping controls are taken by the respective team representatives to the doping control station straight from the pitch as soon as the match is over.”
They continue: “Philip Jones has been charged for insulting and directing abusive language towards the doping control officer (Article 15 (1) of the UEFA disciplinary regulations), as well as for lack of co-operation and respect towards the doping control procedure (Article 6.05 ADR).
“The player Daley Blind has been charged for violation and non-compliance with Article 6.05 (a) of the UEFA anti-doping regulations, which states that ‘every player designated to undergo as doping control is personally responsible for reporting immediately to the doping control station as notified’.”
Now all this might seem trivial, but if one takes into account the fact that Uefa spent 18 months attempting to by-pass World Anti Doping Agency regulations, while claiming that WADA was incompetent, and the rules clearly didn’t apply to football because WADA didn’t know what it was doing, and Uefa were going to do it properly… well, one doesn’t really have much faith.
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If you missed the story of that drugs fiasco and Liverpool’s engagement in it, it is not surprising because most of the British press refused to cover it. Fortunately we were able to get information from Switzerland and so published The weird story of Uefa attempting to by-pass world doping rules is finally resolved.
2. Stan Kroenke and glorifying animal killing
I’m not a vegetarian and I don’t support any animal charities. But I don’t think killing or hunting animals for sport is a clever or morally defensible thing to do. So I really wish Stan Kroenke had not launched has an outdoor sports TV channel in the UK which includes bloodsports and hunting shows. It’s a hunting shooting and fishing channel and incorporates programmes on trophy hunting.
My own view, which of course is just my view, nothing more, is that when you are the custodian of an organisation or a building or anything else that means a huge amount to a huge number of people, you really need to be rather careful in what else you associate yourself with.
He is the owner of Arsenal, and as such he has a responsibility towards the sensitivities that exist in the country in which Arsenal is based. And yes I know there are a lot of people here who still support hunting, and that hunting goes on via the special allowances made for it in law. But it is opposed by very many people and is a sensitive subject, and it is just plain dopey of the owner to ignore such sensitivities.
The view that the channel only shows that which is legal, is neither here nor there. Pornography is by and large legal in the UK and I don’t really want the owner of Arsenal associated with that either. I’ll leave sort of set up to West Ham United.
3: Ronaldo denies €14.7m tax evasion in Madrid court
And of course he is innocent until proven otherwise, but others have gone down this route before him.
Ronaldo earns more per second that I do a year (well, I haven’t worked that out but I expect it is true) and I use an accountant to ensure I pay all my tax. Maybe Ronaldo is clean, but it reminds me of the players who have already been found guilty… Messi, Romario, Javier Mascherano, Samuel Eto’o, Neymar….
4: Everyone found guilty of fraud and embezzlement in relation to Fifa and Uefa.
I don’t really have to go over all the cases again do I?
5: There is no plan B
Wages and transfer fees are escalating in a way we have never seen before. No one knows what the British economy will look like in two years time when we leave the EU. It is possible that borders will shut and non-British players will lose their right to be here.
Extreme and bizarre and it won’t happen? A bit like the President of the USA then.
I am not saying anything will go wrong, but I don’t think anyone has the slightest notion of what to do if things do go wrong in football as Britain leaves the EU and English clubs have to ditch hundreds of overseas players at once. The politicians won’t suffer because they never do. No more than Ronaldo will suffer. Clubs might.
It just seems to me that this is not quite the time to be ploughing more and more money into something which loses its money so quickly. Personally if I had anything to invest I’d put it into machinery to pick the crops currently picked by hand by non-British workers every summer.
But then I don’t have anything to invest, and of course none of it is up to me.
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- “Your job is built on mistrust”: Wenger speaks to the media. Plus Arsenal v Sevilla line up.
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