Overreaction Monday ft Mesut Ozil, Bruno Fernandes and Andres Iniesta’s ruined reputation
Overthinking and over-reacting to situations is the human way but when it comes to football something clicks in a person that makes things comical, ludicrous and rarely sensible. That being said after an empty weekend of hysterical fans in England, there were bound to be a few hare-brained ideas.
Social media would have ruined Andres Iniesta’s career and reputation
Amidst a video of the Andres Iniesta floating about the interweb, there was a take claiming that social media trolls would have destroyed his reputation and career.
SC Take: There are few players in the world that are universally admired. Lionel Messi, Kaka, Ronaldinho, Jay Jay Okocha, Iker Casillas and Andrea Pirlo are few. But their leader has to be unquestionably Andres Iniesta because it’s simply impossible to hate him. His upbringing, his story, his charity work and his rise to being one of the greatest midfielders to ever grace a football field.
He never scored or even assisted too many goals but for some that never matters. Watching Iniesta brought joy to people across the world and it still does, years after he left Barcelona and years after he was at his very best. So to say that social media or at least Iniesta playing when social media is at its best would have ruined him is an overreaction. If anything, it would have only made his career even better.
Bruno Fernandes is the most overrated midfielder in the Premier League
Despite only watching him play just nine games for Manchester United, a part of the world has come to the opinion that Bruno Fernandes is the most overrated player in England.
SC Take: Few can deny the impact that Bruno Fernandes has made on Manchester United. He’s somehow singlehandedly managed to push the club up the league table and is one of the main reasons why they were on an eleven game-winning run before the season was suspended. But that’s not to say that he’s the second coming of Kevin De Bruyne. The Belgian is on a level that few players in the universe can touch and Fernandes isn’t even close to that.
He needs time to maybe hit that level if he can, and even then he may never replicate the magical genius that is Kevin De Bruyne. Comparing Fernandes to him makes no sense but then again so does calling him overrated.
Football will be perfectly fine after the lockdown is lifted
In what is an obvious trying time for not just sport but human life and the world itself, the interweb has claimed that football will be fine despite all the chaos surrounding it.
SC Take: Amidst what is utter chaos in the footballing world, many believe that the world’s most popular sport will walk out of a global pandemic unscathed. That is despite what has been utter chaos in the Scottish football pyramid and the English football pyramid. Despite league seasons being cancelled, despite pay cuts being fought against and even despite the world finding out that football has a lot of money.
That’s utter nonsense because football has changed. The game we watch on the field may be exactly the same but the game we watch off the field will never be the same again. The way football associations and billionaire owners have treated their clubs and the clubs below them has seen many a fan’s stomach turn. The way the league have gone about unsuccessfully organising pay-cuts across Europe has turned fans on players and vice versa. A lot has changed and football most certainly will not be fine. The game will be but football won’t.
Mesut Ozil has flushed his reputation down the drain by refusing a pay cut
After reports revealed that Arsenal star Mesut Ozil was one of three players, two unnamed, to refuse their pay cut, the world went hell for leather against the German.
SC Take: Now you were playing for a Premier League club. A club owned by a billionaire who could survive hundreds of pandemics, let’s hope that never happens if he had to. Now this club is also amongst the most popular and highest-earning sides in the league but yet they ask you to take a pay cut despite the fact that they have a billionaire backing them. It’s his money, his choice and it’s a rather justifiable decision to see why Ozil is stalling, if he really is one of the three Arsenal players to refuse the cut, on the deal.
He’s waiting to see the entire picture before committing himself to what will be a 12-month deal with no way out. But saying his reputation is in the drain because of that, despite the backing from his teammates, is ridiculous. This is after all a player that has a history of charitableness and benevolence to nearly any cause on the earth. Now hypothetically, imagine he opts to take an even bigger pay cut than the 12.5% Arsenal have asked. Does that mean that all the other coaches and players’ reputations have been flushed down the drain?