Cricketdude
Chairman of Selectors
http://theworldgame.sbs.com.au/blogs/lesmurray/ronaldo-the-millionaire-slave-123034/
So do you think Ronaldo has the right to move to Real Madrid?
I think people need a reality check, something not easy in the world of football whose realities tend these days to bring on violent indigestion and the urge to heave.
Now let me say from the outset that I think Ronaldo?s behaviour, in wanting out of his lavish five-year contract at Manchester United just one year after he signed it in good faith, is an utter disgrace.
Ronaldo, who let me say, never struck me as an intellectual giant, is the thoroughly modern footballer, that is one who doesn?t shun an opportunity to wriggle out of a $12 million per year contract if he can get one that pays even more.
Someone should sit him down and get him to act an age that is beyond the one his acne dotted face suggests.
Admittedly, the club that is attempting to lure him is Real Madrid, a magical name along the career path any young footballer dreams of completing. That compounds the judgment just a little. It?s not quite as if he is being wooed away from the ?theatre of dreams? by LA Galaxy or the Urawa Reds
It can also be argued that Ronaldo?s timing, given that he considers a move to Chamartin an upward one, is understandable. His last season at Old Trafford was so devastatingly successful, it is unlikely even he will be able to top it. So cash in while the going?s good.
Still, Ronaldo has to stand condemned. He is, let?s not forget, supposed to be a sportsman. And sport is, above all, about things like honour, decency and honesty, even today. If that is no longer the case then I am no longer a football columnist but a commentator on the goings on a grand knocking shop.
But what of the ?slavery? comments by Blatter and the steroid fuelled reactions in the media?
If I understand what Blatter said ? and understanding Blatter?s English is an acquired art ? he referred to modern slavery in football and suggested that ?if a player wants to leave, let him leave.?
Colleagues in the media pounced on the word ?slavery?, took it at its dictionary definition and started making comparisons between Ronaldo?s fleet of sports cars and the ragged lot of African slaves in the days of William Wilberforce.
This was more than a little silly.
I would suggest that Blatter, a man prone to not considering his words before uttering them, was making reference to the reality that clubs, their managers and the player agents, barter daily in human flesh as if it were a piece of inert commodity.
Well, do they not? And haven?t they been doing it for a hundred years?
Even today I read a number of news pieces about how Frank Lampard may be ?sold? to Inter, how Milan still intends to ?buy? Adebayor from Arsenal, and how Joan Laporta has reached a ?selling price? agreement with Milan for Ronaldinho.
So what stuff is this if it is not about a case of a trade in humans? Buying, selling, agreeing on a selling price? Is this not a kind of slavery, even if the slaves themselves are agreeable and get well paid?
It is to this, I suspect, to which the FIFA chief referred. Was he so much off the mark?
And was it so unreasonable of Blatter to suggest that if Ronaldo wants to leave his club he should be allowed to leave?
Is that not the level of professional freedom to which you and I subscribe? Do not, you and I, have the right to change employers?
It is, as I have said above, wholly regrettable and reprehensible that Ronaldo is in the mood to renege, go back on his word, and move to another place.
But the pimply boy, having evaluated his own market value, is intent on cashing in and going where the dollar and his personal ambition leads him.
It is not nice, he is no slave and he sure ain?t no Spartacus. But he is within his rights to move on, and choose the career path he wants, as we are all.
He should be accorded that right.
So do you think Ronaldo has the right to move to Real Madrid?
: Yes, however, him showing he wants to leave United may have something to do with it.
