Sepp is right, Mourinho is looking for a job and Wenger is a baby snatcher?

By 1970’s Gooner

There has been a lot of codswallop spouted out by Sepp Blatter, the outspoken FIFA President, on a lot of issues over the years.

And a lot of the English homophobic media have once again treated his recent comments on the Eduardo issue with not only disdain but ridicule.

I have to say however that on this (and the 39th game) issue he is talking a lot of sense. Regular readers of this site will not of course be very surprised to find myself and my co writer on this issue “The Coach” in such a total agreement with good old Sepp.


“Dangerous tackling is one of the most important issues in football at the moment,” Blatter said at Fifa's headquarters in Zurich. “Players who do this kind of thing intentionally should be banned from the game.”

Of course it’s pretty damn difficult to prove intention in such kind of circumstances but the sentiment behind what Mr Blatter is saying is correct. Players and their managers should be punished for such high studs tackles.

For if the punishment doesn’t fit the crime then, as many lawyers will testify, there will always be people that will work out that the odds may be worth taking a shot at.

Arsene Wenger was not wrong to retract his view that Taylor should be banned for life. That was slightly excessive.

However he should have demanded instead that Taylor should be banned for as long as Eduardo is out of the game, probably for a year or so. Now this punishment will have fitted the crime alright.

And then managers like McCleish and footballers like Taylor will not carry on their detestable tactics of kicking the opposition straight to the hospital beds and probably to an early retirement.

Because Wenger is right. When they can’t beat you at football they revert to kicking you out of football. Just like Manchester United did when they broke the Invincibles undefeated run by a dodgy penalty and a lenient referee.

But the crux of the matter is that this is the mentality that pervades throughout the football world in this country. It is embedded in the psyche of the nation.Taylor executed the act but the moral instigators of this crime are football managers, referees and the media.

As long as the powers to be allow football skills to be countered with brutal force and feel that “it’s just one of those things that happen on the football field” then there will never be any hope for English football.

And the English national team will more often than not stumble out of major tournaments at the quarter final stage…..

Mourinho on the other hand does not see this issue as interesting enough to comment upon.

He is of course more interested in himself and on how he would relish coming back to Stamford Bridge and slaying Chelsea.

You know like many a football manager who has been sacked and after spending enough time with the missus and the kids finally gets the ultimate sack; from his wife who probably has had enough of him lounging around the house feeling sorry for himself.

Once they decide that they need a job they start making the rounds on TV programmes and giving interviews to newspapers whereas a few months before their mobile number was a bigger secret than a NASA report on alien visitors to Connecticut, USA.

I have been linked with ten clubs, but it is all lies.” He said “Just because I am not working any more in English football, my feelings haven’t changed,” he said. “I don’t hide that I was deeply in love with English football and that I will be back — not the next step, but I want to be back one day.

My house is in London, my friends are there.”

What does this tell you?

And Mourinho has identified Wenger again as his choice of attack saying among other things that Wenger has not won anything and he is still in a job!

Whereas poor Mourinho has won league titles and FA Cups and still got the sack. I would tend to agree that Abramovic was very wrong to kick Mourinho out. I doubt whether Chelsea will emulate those achievements again.

Where Mourinho is very wrong however is to accuse Wenger of not developing any talent himself but snatching young talent from abroad. This is what he said:

“Their coach hasn’t won anything for years and is still an idol. There is no pressure at Arsenal. But do not say he is growing young players into talents. What he does is take young players who are jewels and polishes them.”

Now I ask you what has Mourinho done to develop young talent at Chelsea during his tenure there? Surely a club that bought almost all of their first team squad (and at the most exorbitant prices you would ever imagine) cannot turn round and accuse Wenger of stealing young players!

At least Wenger spends the time, energy and money to identify the youngsters.

Youngsters who at their impressionable years get the chance to be tutored by one of the best academies in the world and learn to play the beautiful football they way it should be played.

What does he expect Wenger to do then? Become a baby snatcher and steal young babies from their mother’s lap, whisk them to London Colney, keep them there under lock stock and barrel so that they then can be classified as genuine Arsenal academy home grown players?

Come to think about it what constitutes a home grown player? Someone like Charlie George who came to Arsenal at around 12?

This doesn’t happen anymore as all the promising kids find themselves affiliated to a local club most of the time anyway.

A lot of managers are jealous of Wenger who has achieved so much, developed so many world stars from nothing and all on a shoestring while making a huge profit on transfers.

Oh I almost forgot: and playing beautiful football in the process……