It may be haves & have-yachts in CL but our clubs should still be able to pull a Rabiot out of hat
A text from a mate at full-time on Tuesday night, followed by five of the angriest looking emojis he could find on his phone.
Welcome to the world of Scotland’s diddy clubs. Nice to have a new member.
He’s right, obviously. The uneven distribution of wealth is one of football’s oldest arguments.
God knows we’ve had the debate on this page often enough.
The lack of competition, the rich getting richer, the game eating itself from the top down through greed.
In the 12 group games out of 16 in midweek that didn’t end up draws, the aggregate score was 38- 6. Total mismatches. It’s a story we’re all too familiar with on a domestic level, the gulf between the haves and the have-nots.
The difference in the Champions League is that it’s the haves versus the have-yachts.
It will never change. The Qataris are pouring money into PSG, not for sport but for politics and access.
Roman Abramovich pours money into Chelsea, not for sport but for ego. Others are in it for profit.
Approximately none of them is in it for the greater good.
Sure, the money’s obscene. A pal from down south told me about a loan deal to a team in the bottom half of the Championship.
Between the player’s wages, the loan fee, promotion bonuses and appearance penalty clauses if he doesn’t start enough games, he could cost them £ 4m for the season.
Then he’s back to his parent club. It’s mind-boggling.
Still, the thing I took away from watching the Celtic game with PSG the other night had nothing to do with money – it had to do with class.
And wondering when – how – could we ever produce a player like Adrien Rabiot?
Never mind Neymar, Marco Verratti, Edinson Cavani, Thiago Motta, geniuses though they are.
In a team full of superstars, a team assembled at the cost of more than half a billion pounds, Rabiot was the one for me.
Couldn’t take my eyes off him. A solid hour of unadulterated midfield man-love.
Runs like he’s on ca s t e r s . F l u id i t y of movement that says he has WD40 in his veins not blood. More elegant than anything a Swiss finishing school could turn out. He sees through the game with the vision of an MRI scanner.
Plays with his head up, with the bal l and without , threads passes into pockets only he appears to see.
You just look at him and sigh with longing.
Then you think ‘He’s a human being, right?’
Not an android or a genetic freak.
So given the fact we could never afford to buy a Rabiot, how do we create an environment where we actually make one?
He was a kid once, wasn’t he? To be fair, at 22, there’s an argument to say he’s barely a man now.
But it’s not like he was earmarked for greatness as a toddler. His youth career was decent but not exceptional through four dif ferent clubs, including a brief spell at Man City.
But he joined PSG at 15 and has been playing in their first team since he was 17. By all accounts, he didn’t start shining for their national youth teams until he played for the U19s.
When you consider not a single player in our league could gett in PSG’s reserves, and barely a playerayer in England could even squeeze into their first 18, that requires res
Football fans will call their ground what it has always been called. So take the cheque for the naming rights from a sponsor, use it wisely, and it’s win-win. But for God’s sake, show some commonsense. The YOURRadio103FM Stadium sounds more a wifi password than Dumbarton’s home. And charming guy or not, the email from Patrick Thistle’s excellent PR George Francis imploring all in the media to use the full name of The Energy Check Stadium at Firhill every time it’s mentioned, will fall on deaf ears. The standard of arguments against Aberdeen’s new stadium plumbed new depths in their hearing during the week. It ranged from the grass being too green to the media attention making the club a terror target. If these not-in-my-back-yard merchants win their case to deny the Dons their move, then it’ll tell you all you need to know about the shortsightedness of local politics in this country.