It’s funny how some teams like to stoke up the myth that they have more integrity than others or that they work to a higher moral code. When you look beyond the propaganda you usually see that they work with some dark arts as the rest of them.

FC Barcelona are one such club.

For years they would join the field with no sponsors emblazoned on their chests. It was a noble effort. Then it was decided that the Camp Nou club would have the name of a charity (Unicef) placed on their strips. In truth this was a bit of a stunt from Barca, just so they could get their fans used to having sponsorship names on the Barcelona strips. Within a few years Unicef was dropped for Qatar airways. Now they are about to add Beko to the sleeves of the strips.

Now I’m not against Barca selling sponsorship space. It makes complete economic sense. It’s the ‘Look we are doing this for charity’ nonsense that they employed that was annoying. It was great that Unicef got the exposure and a nice donation but Barca banging on about it is a bit like me giving a pound to a jakey on Sauchiehall street and telling my family and friends about it for the next year.

You then look at how they bring in young foreign players. FIFA have suspended a two transfer window ban, whilst waiting for Barcelona’s appeal to be heard. The ban was in place due to Barca being found guilty of breaching rules concerning transfers of youth players. It all sounds a bit off. Again it won’t just be Barcelona but they are the club that place themselves on the moral high ground.

Now let’s look at how the Catalan giants are trying to court Luis Suarez this summer.

Here is what former Barca keeper and current sporting director Andoni Zubizarreta had to say about Suarez…

“Suarez has shown he is humble enough to admit an error, which is very important,” 

“Everyone knows Luis is an excellent player, everyone knows last season he played in various positions in attack, but everyone also knows he is a Liverpool player.”

It’s a bit ironic for Zubizarreta to end that with the fact Suarez is a Liverpool player. If the sporting director respected the fact he was a Liverpool player, then he’d not have commented on the situation at all.

We all kind of guessed that the Suarez ‘apology’ was orchestrated by ‘Los Cules’ rather than the player. The apology makes his statement to FIFA look weak and by doing that, he also made his international coach and FA look a bit silly too. But it was done as a PR stunt to help Barca sell the move to the fans and once again show they’re a club with huge integrity. It’s interesting that no one at Liverpool seemed to know the apology was coming.

It looks certain that Barcelona will sign Luis Suarez for a fee in the region of £80m. Has he or someone on his behalf spoken to Barca already? I don’t doubt it, but will they get done for tapping up the player? Probably not. Liverpool will want to get rid of the problem player now, especially for such a huge fee. It would be better if they could get Alexis Sanchez as part of that deal then even better.

But can’t it all be done above board. With the buying club approaching the selling side and putting in a bid for the player? Do we really need the whole drama played out in the Spanish and British press?

The player is a fantastic talent but even if he’s assured Barca’s head honchos “that there will never again be another incident like this.”, the fact remains he cannot be trusted and he could easily do something similar again. But like Liverpool before them, Barcelona will turn a blind eye and forget their moral compass.

The fact is this, football is now more about business than sporting integrity. Clubs like Barcelona and Liverpool will always back the worst behaved stars until they are no longer a worthwhile commodity.

I don’t really mind that football clubs now operate this way but please don’t continue to shout that you’re all about the community, charity and the fans. You have let the veil slip and its an ugly, greedy face that now runs the game, at all levels.

Posted on July 2nd, 2014 by scott
Filed under: Article