Filed under: Football
There are some who believe Arsenal should bite the bullet and sell Cesc Fabregas to Barcelona and on the surface the reasons appear compelling: the player wants to go, the longer he is forced to stay the less focused he becomes and surely it is inhumane to deny a man the chance to play in the greatest club side of the 21st century - one he also loves as a supporter.Arsene Wenger, in opposing the move for the second successive summer, stands accused of stubborness, self-delusion - or even of being simply too scared to contemplate life without his influential captain.
Yet the bottom line remains this: why should Arsenal sell their prize asset to a Champions League rival who, for the second close season in a row, either will not or cannot meet the player's true value?
They may wear 'Unicef' on their shirts but Barcelona - the club with the highest wage bill in football history by the way - are as cynical as they come, as the latest pronouncement from president Sandro Rosell illustrates.
"What is the limit for signing him? We'll need to see," he pontificated. "First we need to know what his salary is and what are his conditions. Everything is in relation to the salary and the transfer fee, but if last year we offered 40million (Euros) it is clear that this year his value is less.
"I don't know what will happen with Cesc, but in the case that we were interested, we won't go mad and pay over the top."
The key portion, of course, is the bit about Fabregas' value having gone down. Presumably the basis for such an argument is that the player is now a year nearer to the end of his contract.
But that contract still has three seasons to run and, at 24, the midfielder is very much in his prime. Would Rosell admit that Leo Messi is not worth as much as he used to be merely because he has been busy running around for the last 12 months?
'Mes que un club' is the Barca motto and that much is true. The myth of the 'Catalan nation' has a hold over all that live there it seems (although some must have chosen to support Espanyol of course) and the closest English equivalent can be found in Newcastle - the sense that, for a player, the reward in playing for the club everyone you grew up with followed with a passion bordering on religious fervour outweighs all other considerations.
But that attitude saw Alan Shearer, a higher-profile name in these shores in his prime than Fabregas can ever be, win nothing but the adulation of the Toon Army at a time when he could have been conquering Europe with Manchester United.
Of course, Fabregas is unlikely to have that problem at the Nou Camp. Indeed, it is exactly the opposite: Barca win just about everything and as a result Fabregas knows only too well that the root of Barca's reluctance to meet Arsenal's valuation is the fact that they don't really need him that badly. And may never will.
It all adds up to a sorry state of affairs, especially as Barca, despite not being fully committed to him, in playing the emotional card have effectively barred him from signing for another club with similar ambitions, of which there is only one - Real Madrid.
"I don't think he will got to another Spanish club," Rosell added. "Cesc is of Barca, and if I were the president of another club I wouldn't sign a player who holds dear the colours of another team."
Throw into the mix all the comments from Barcelona players, throughout last summer and now at the start of this, declaring how Cesc should be allowed to 'come home' and Wenger's stubborn stance makes moral as well as financial sense.
Imagine if Manchester United had been busy making constant comments about Samir Nasri coming to Old Trafford? How the Frenchman needs to win something? There would be uproar. Yet Barcelona, by virtue of being the best in the world on the pitch, seem to feel they can act as arrogantly as they like off it.
Wenger is right to stick to his guns - and the sooner Fabragas realises his career has thrived by being away from the Nou Camp not despite that particular fact the better.
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