Not ignoring Igor
Still and always footballers will yawn through the presentation, listen to a coach babbling down the phone, and then do what they want anyway.
Odd things get stuck in my mind sometimes and among them is a video clip from a while back of some executive type from Wrexham — not Shaun Harvey, and not one of the famous ones. I didn't recognise him because I've never watched the documentaries because Shaun Harvey.
He was talking about trying to sign a player who had a choice of joining Wrexham or Bolton, and chose Bolton. Fans on social media learned this with either glee or horror, depending on which side of Wrexham's status as a 'finished club' they were standing. Ryan Reynolds' transfer strategy was torn to public shreds, the whole foundations of the project were shaking, if Hollywood FC couldn't beat the Trotters to a player.
According to this exec, that's not really how it was. The player was happy with the financial offer from Wrexham. It was the same as the one from Bolton. Neither club was going to convince him by offering more money. He made it clear that he was happy to join either of them, he was just going to have to think about it and choose. And then he chose Bolton, because his brother lived there, and it's where he'd grown up.
Leeds United's Championship winning season, game by game, as written at Leedsista.com.
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That footballers have choices gets obfuscated in the age of Profit & Sustainability rules and the rising pseudo technocratic language that has really gripped the Fabrizio Romano gang this summer. Clubs are constantly 'presenting their project' to players, agents are reaching 'total agreement' on terms, add-ons have morphed into 'achievable add-ons' (is anyone proposing contracts with 'implausible add-ons'? maybe Victor Orta will know), and football feels ever more like it's full of very small boys wearing very big suits pretending that their jobs are very important. 'Look,' sporting directors say to teenage footballers who already earn multiples weekly of a sporting director's career earnings, 'We did a project for you on the computer.'
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