Life is Hell

Found the following from Liverpool's website (Title linked to actual webpage).

This appeared in Sunday Independent in Ireland.
An Article written by Dion Fanning, who normally tells it how it is, with no Bull.
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FERGUSON CONFUSING LOYALTY WITH OBEDIENCE
Sunday July 29 2007

ON his deathbed, Conrad Black's father gave his son the skinny on the world he was about to depart. "Life is hell," George Black told little Conrad, "most people are b******s and everything is bull****."

Black senior's observations might have coloured his son's view of the world somewhat, but they are as valid for sport, so often said to be a metaphor for life that one day it may turn out to be true. And then you come to the Premiership.

Niall Quinn is not the first despairing chairman to wonder if agents are rotting football and, despite Harry Redknapp's anger at Quinn's comments, he is right to point out the distortion of the market. Last Friday in Malahide, Roy Keane remarked that, come next summer, he'd rather not waste his time trying to sign players, spending hours on the phone for deals that turn out to be nothing but negotiating ploys.

It is a brave man, you'd imagine, who wants to waste Keane's time, but new money has made many in football brazen and if they are prepared to see clubs waste their money, they are prepared to try Keane's patience.

Others handle it differently. Last week, Alex Ferguson and Rafael Benitez walked down the avenue of bull**** on which English football parades itself and provided some pre-season entertainment that gave an indication of the year we may be about to witness.

It has been a very long summer and it is ending in the same way it has for the past 20: with Alex Ferguson attempting to assert his superiority over all those who challenge him.

United, with good reason, are extremely confident that Carlos Tevez is their player, so confident that they talk openly about him, pre-judging any ruling in any court, pushing West Ham closer to a point where the various stories they have told since Tevez and Javier Mascherano arrived last summer seem less and less plausible.

Loyalty was the watchword when Ferguson was growing up on the streets of Govan - even if Ferguson seems to have often appeared to confuse it with obedience to a capricious master - but showing weakness was top of the list of Things Not to Do and United's manager has never forgotten it.

Liverpool's victory in the Champions' League in 2005 (Benitez was a little puzzled to receive a tactical breakdown of the events in Istanbul from Ferguson a few weeks later) and the general opinion that Liverpool have worked out European football far better than United has not provoked Ferguson.

But in trying to sign Gabriel Heinze, everything changed. As the dominant team in Britain for the past 15 years, United would appear to have most to gain from the opening of a transfer channel between the two clubs. Three years ago, Ferguson claimed that Steven Gerrard was the most influential player in England while lamenting the fact that he could never sign for United.

Ferguson is rarely unsure of his own righteousness

Gerrard nearly joined Chelsea that year instead but had Liverpool recently signed a player from United, Ferguson could have convincingly argued (or more convincingly argued than normal because Ferguson is rarely unsure of his own righteousness) that Gerrard was entitled to join United.

So Liverpool's interest in Heinze could be turned to United's advantage. Instead Ferguson assumes the position - there will be no deal, the agents are scoundrels, Liverpool are opportunists and Heinze is a United player and will be until Ferguson decides otherwise.

In acknowledging that Liverpool are rivals to be bracketed alongside Chelsea and Arsenal, Ferguson is elevating them to a standard their league record doesn't justify. Yet he is prepared to do it to hold on to Heinze and make a point, criticising Liverpool for speaking as if the player is already theirs.

As he criticises Liverpool, he won't tolerate the idea that Tevez is not his player and the list of signings who were sweet-talked while at other clubs is extensive.

But for Ferguson, sport is a metaphor, not for life, but for war. He is fighting the good fight trying to remind agents of their place, and, if there are casualties, well, in war, bad things happen.

He has tried this before, taking on player and agent power in specific cases, most recently when he decided that Cristiano Ronaldo would not be leaving United after last summer's World Cup. Despite the interest of Real Madrid, the determination of his agents to make a deal and the knowledge that Ronaldo was shaping up nicely as a scapegoat for the English media, looking for a reason beyond the facts for England's failure, Ferguson remained implacable.

Soon Ronaldo was a story of redemption, playing for the champions of England and Ferguson was right and righteous once again.

Rafael Benitez is a curious opponent. He has angered and ignored the media equally, refusing to acknowledge their importance, disarming the bully by treating him with indifference.

He is trying the same thing with Ferguson. Benitez has talked about signing Heinze as if he is buying from any club. There is no acknowledgment of Ferguson's exalted position, just a simple statement of the facts, an admission that he would like to buy the player and the revelation that things are now in the hands of their lawyers.

The lawyers don't need to be asked twice. They will be at the centre of more and more deals as football becomes the stage for men who think they can get richer and richer, quicker and quicker. "I should have kept playing," Keane said on Friday, when he joked about the wages players were on, before noting that we haven't peaked yet. There is plenty of bull**** still to be spread around.