No medals but Cesc's still a success

Posted on 22/05/2010

Arsenal may be fighting a losing battle to hold on the Cesc Fabregas, with Barcelona working hard to lure him back to Spain. Barca star Xavi has said it is a scandal that a player of Fabregas’ talent has not won any trophies at club level, but the Guardian’s Dara O’Brien says that is not the way to judge a player.

I get it, Fábregas is going. Even if Arsenal hardball him into another season like I think they should, he was always going at some stage. But do we have show him the door quite as eagerly? I'm talking about all the think pieces this week telling us about the inevitability of his return, his quest for the biggest prizes, his apparent exasperation with Arsenal's mediocrity. So let's get him to Barça sharpish and start drooling over this great team.

My Fábregas pain is one shared by Aston Villa fans watching the Milner situation, or Liverpool fans nervously awaiting word on Torres. Each of these fans has the right to ask about the unseemly rush to herd all the great players into as small a collection of teams as possible.

Why is it presumed that players should move, just to collect trophies? Why not stay at the club and build something for once? Why are we so quick to applaud, even insist on, the glory-seeking move? Doesn't it just serve to concentrate all the playing resources in the same couple of clubs? Doesn't it just make the leagues more and more dull? The Spanish league is a series of exhibition matches with two clásicos to sort out the top places. We all drop the difficulty setting on Fifa now and again just to get a run of enjoyable victories together; it usually gets a little boring after a while.

Martin Samuel in the Daily Mail wrote during the week: "When Cesc Fábregas [leaves Arsenal] ... in the brutal reckoning of elite football, he will do so as a failure." This is nonsense. Footballers should not be discouraged from remembering that they have it pretty sweet. They get paid a bucket of money to do a job they've dreamed of since childhood. They are ahead. A long way ahead of their peers, who didn't make the grade. An unimaginably, stellar distance ahead of the rest of us schmoes who will never, ever know the joy of running out on to the pitch, let alone scoring a winning goal. There is no conceivable way their lives can be regarded as anything but success.

Would you seriously tell Alan Shearer, say, that his career was a failure for going to Newcastle that time, rather than Man United? Or Steven Gerrard for staying at Liverpool, instead of moving to Chelsea? Of course not. That would be infantile. The measure of a man is not just in the baubles he collects.

A chance for Balotelli to shine

The Champions League final hands Jose Mourinho the chance to cap a stunning season at Inter Mila with an amazing Treble. Bayern Munich stand in his way, but Ian Chadband in the Daily Telegraph suggests that a player who has baffled Mourinho, a certain Mario Balotelli, could be the man to take the spotlight and silence his detractors.

Inter Milan may not just be losing the best coach in the world after the Champions League final; they could also be bidding farewell to perhaps the most important footballer in Europe.

The kid who has divided the sport in Italy at the same time as looking eminently capable of changing the face of the game there.

Even Jose Mourinho, who has never quite yet been able to answer 'how do you solve a problem like Mario?’ would not put it past Mario Balotelli writing an outlandish denouement to his fantastically turbulent and dramatic season.

What a story, what a cause for celebration in the new, more ethnically diverse Italy if the 19-year-old striker, the nation’s first born-and-bred black footballing superstar, could deliver the perfect final riposte to the racists who have routinely assailed him from the stands in a country still struggling to come to grips with multiculturalism.