Updates on Said and Done

Speech of the week
“Football is a game, not a product; football is a sport, not a market; football is a spectacle, not a business … It is a sport of the people, not the elite … It must resist financial temptations [and] it must be guided by sporting interests, not commercial or political.” – Qatar 2022 voter Michel Platini.

Best commitment
11 Nov, Wilfried Bony drawing a line under transfer talk. “It’s all in the past and not important now. I don’t think about it. [A new Swansea contract] is something I want. It will be done.” 19 Nov: Signs until 2018. Garry Monk: “It’s fantastic: we need commitment and this shows Bony’s very committed. When we talk about the future and progressing it can’t just be talk – there has to be commitment.”

• Also drawing a line: 1 Jan, Manuel Pellegrini on why financial fair play meant a bid for Bony would make no sense. “That is just one of the 20 or 30 names I have read … But we have restrictions about money. I don’t think it will be a special window for our team.”

Best bet-hedging
Malaysia international Gary Steven Robbat, banned for three months for signing for two different clubs while under contract at a third. The FA voided all his contracts. Former Malaysia manager Ong Kim Swee: “I don’t blame Gary, he’s a nice boy. But I hope he and others will learn.”

Other news: row of the week
Zimbabwe FA chief executive Jonathan Mashingaidze calling for a united front against “disturbing” rivals trying to unseat president Cuthbert Dube’s board. “The football family should protect us from such vampires.” The move comes nine months after Dube marked his re-election win – called “scandalous, indecent and defying all rationality and purpose” by a government minister – by revealing a new plan to end his FA’s debt problem. “Maybe some people will ask if I’m alright in my head, but we are going to diversify into farming. Cattle ranching and crop farming. There’s no way you can fail.”

Best humanitarian
Ghana coach Avram Grant, raising awareness of the crushing inequality in Equatorial Guinea: “You need to see our bus. It is a bus which behaves like a ship. We are the only team that receives this bus, the other teams have a good bus … I came [to this press conference] because I respect you. But it will not happen again.”

Most devout
Romania: Gigi Becali – refusing to sell Steaua Bucharest, according to a prison insider. Media quoted Becali saying he is “no longer interested in material things, only in God” – but also that Steaua “makes me €10-15m a year, and God wouldn’t want me to throw that away.” Becali: “I’m all about salvation.”

 

Platini in his own way worse than Blatter, what a twat.

 

If only Messi would do a "Robbatt" with us.....

and Ronaldo......

and Aguero.......

and

 

Hate Platini.
He's a grade 1 tool.