Morning all, a quick Saturday round-up for you.
Arsenal are in action this evening, taking on Girona in an unspecified location somewhere in Spain. Why won’t they at least give us a clue? It’s way too early in pre-season to make any real judgements about anything, but if we don’t win convincingly playing some of the most scintillating football the world has ever seen, I think it’s completely reasonable to get the pitchforks out and behave like it’s the end of the world.
In seriousness though, we might be able to glean a thing or two about the fitness of certain players, and with so many senior internationals still away, there’s likely to be a healthy smattering of Hale End lads involved which should make it interesting enough. Kick off, in this part of the world, is 19.00.
There’s been some further reporting on Bruno Guimaraes which, when you add it up, suggests that the player will sign for Arsenal for a fee somewhere between €70m and €90m, which I guess you could say is collective hedge-betting. Each tiny piece of incremental information which says nothing particularly new might give us a broader view of what’s happening, but ultimately we have to remember we live in a time when there is genuine currency for some, not all, in social media likes and engagement.
Which isn’t to say people don’t have good sources or even solid information, but the updates which suggest progress without anything particularly substantive to say are just a fact of life when it comes to transfer business. The same applies to the Vinicius Junior pursuit which is the big story of the Arsenal summer, and again what we’ve heard of late sounds promising, but there hasn’t been an earth-shattering development in that regard. It’s the way of the online world, I think we all understand that, and it’s important to have that as your starting point when trying to parse any new information that gets posted.
There’s likely to be some post-game press coverage after our game later on, so let’s see if Mikel Arteta has anything to say. However, my strong feeling is that if he won’t give us tuppence about a fringe player’s hamstring, there’s zero chance of him saying anything publicly about the most ambitious and expensive transfer many of us have ever seen this club involved in. So, we’ll just have to wait and see.
Meanwhile, after UEFA, CONCACAF and the AFC refused to support the FIFA sell-off plan, Gianni Infantino issued a statement last night, saying:
Having listened carefully to all the views, it has become clear that the project has created divisions of a nature that, regardless of the level of support, are no longer in the interest of the objective set out in the first place.
Our purpose has always been — and will always be — to unite and improve. As a result, this proposal will not proceed.
Moving forward, my intent is to bring all interested parties back together in the coming days and weeks in the spirit of shared interest in our game, and with the objective to continue growing football everywhere, particularly in those countries that mostly need our support.
It came after his senior advisor, Carlos Cordeiro, quit with a public statement that pulled no punches. If we take his assertion that he knew nothing about it at face value, it tells you how underhand and sneaky Infantino has been about its development. Cordeiro also urged other people of ‘principle’ inside FIFA to speak up. Later, FIFA’s COO, Kevin Lamour, said staff had been ‘deceived’ by Infantino, and that they ‘deserve better than contempt and intimidation’. He didn’t resign, and basically put it up to the FIFA president to fire him, which is what will probably happen. From everywhere else inside the organisation, tumbleweeds, and it’s notable that there was zero accountability and no concession to any wrongdoing in FIFA’s statement.
I think we know Infantino won’t do the honourable thing, which is to step down, that is not in his nature. He will cling to power, row back on what has happened this week, and wait for it to all blow over, but surely he’s dead man walking. His authority has been more or less completely undermined, he’s been exposed publicly as someone who is looking to profiteer from football via close associates, political and otherwise, and no amount of brushing it under the carpet should be sufficient for him to remain in his post. I expect some kind of desperate play to regain support, probably in the form of ‘financial incentives’, but hopefully the worm has turned and sooner rather than later we see the back of this odious ghoul as his name, much like Sepp Blatter before him, becomes a byword for corruption and borderline criminality.
Righto, I’ll leave it there for now, have a great Saturday folks.