Tuesday 20 January 2009

Kaká deal off

A few thoughts.
  • This feels like a bit of an embarassment for MCFC. I feel embarrassed as a fan. To go to Milan, offering close to €100million to the club, and an alleged £500,000 per week to the player and to be turned away is a genuine failure. The whole point of such sums of money is that they are prohibitively large: so big as to blow away all other considerations. But it didn't work. Kaká stood firm and turned down. We come out of it looking not too clever. Even by his own standards of management speak Garry Cook's statement was meaningless. It has shown quite clearly that to attract the very best - a class to which Robinho does not quite belong - cash and chutzpah are not quite enough.
  • An interesting question is: what does this tell us Robinho? That his transfer was a special case - brought about by the unique circumstance of a world class player desperate to leave his club to almost any available suitor. That his friendship with Kaká was not sufficient to bring him to the club, or at least, it was less strong than Kaká's with Maldini, Pirlo, Pato etc. Or maybe the lure of playing with Robinho is not so much as to attract the world's best?
  • Regardless, Robinho is a good example of what the ADUG cash can achieve, even if it can't tempt Kaká. Hence the frustration at reading that Robinho has left the club's training camp in Tenerife. Ian Ladyman reported that he had gone AWOL, and Tuesday's Sun claims the bust up was over Hughes' decision not to allow him to return home to Brazil for his 25th birthday. But I suppose it's better the dispute be over this rather than frustration at our failure to sign Kaká.
  • Maybe we shouldn't let Harry Redknapp have Wilson Palacios after all.

4 comments:

James said...

I don't think we stood a chance when Berlusconi found out how opposed the Milan fans were to this deal. He is a politician, and the strength of feeling in Italy as a whole must have really shocked him. Kaka would only have left Milan reluctantly, so when Belusconi got cold feet it was an easy job to convince Kaka to stay. To say that City were embarassed is a bit OTT. The collapse of this deal was down to Berlusconi and Berlusconi alone,no matter what spin Milan attempt to put on it, and Berlusconi has now come up smelling of roses. What chance a snap Italian generla election?

Quester said...

Before you all start squawking what a 'hero' Kaka is for deciding to stay at the rapidly dwindling AC Milan, I would point out that the fella never even got to talk to City. It was the slimy, conniving, corrupt (allegedly), politician Berlusconi who spun the story of Kaka's refusal to move to make himself look good when he knew the deal wasn't going to go through. ACM are heavily in debt and he wanted the money from the Kaka sale to bail him and the club out of the mire (no Champions League footie, an ageing squad and no money for replacements)- when he couldn't get what he wanted out of City, he knew he had to divert everyone's attention from the situation and make himself look like a hero! Hey, he's a Politician and Premier of Italy (need I say more), he runs his own media empire (where do you think most of the 'leaks' and mis-information were coming from), he virtually owns ACM outright and he is the man responsible for what goes on there. When he saw the fans reaction to the sale he saw an opportunity to be the hero of the moment, and the rest is history. What will happen of course is that there will be a backlash from the fans at the end of the season when both the football and the finances haven't improved and Berlusconi will be held accountable. Yes, City and Sheikh Mansour have been taken for a bit of a ride on this one, but we will learn and move on to the next 'Galactico' - this is a minor blip on the overall plan and we will soon recover. Laugh while you can all of you, because you know deep down that your days of controlling the EPL are severely numbered - the rise and rise of Manchester City is inevitable and there is absolutely nothing any of you can do to prevent it.

Unknown said...

Two spot-on comments! Cook wasn't given the opportunity to talk to the player. It begs the question - Why was Kaka's father flown in if there wasn't a deal in the offing? - It was never going to be easy but at least we gave it a shot. City are in the spotlight now and who knows what will happen next? If we have some success in the UEFA Cup and climb up the Prem table, we may be better placed to attract superstars in Summer. We already have some of the brightest young talent in the Premiership on our books. Keep the Faith! CTID

Don said...

I'm probably more relieved than disappointed. The only good scenario for us (and the least likely) is that Kakà would have brought us immediate results in the league, and even that would have been tempered by moralising about our having 'bought' success with our filthy lucre which could have fed starving children, etc.

Much better another signing or two in the Kompany/DeJong mold and Boij, Petrov, and Johnson coming back into the ream and we'll have a good base for next season.