English Premier League: A Mascherano has got to do what a Mascherano has got to do
Football clubs treat players like fodder, assets that can be cashed in on any time. Football has come to a line where the sport has turned into a business. One can say this was inevitable given the amount of superficial sponsorships, endorsements and the focus on revenue generation. With the fact that football is now operating as a business and with clubs acting as respective firms, things have to be looked differently.
When a firm is not operating at efficient level or going into losses, they lay off their workers. When they are performing well and earning profits, the employees get bonuses and new contracts which aim to keep them at the organization for as long as possible. This is done so to sustain the boom in performance at the organization or in this case a football club.
In early 2000’s, Michael Owen was one of the best strikers in world football. He was playing for his childhood club Liverpool and doing remarkably well. In his six professional club football seasons at the club, Owen scored 158 times in 297 appearances, making him one of the best ever centre forwards at the Merseyside clubs. However, when in 2004 Rafael Benitez took over at Liverpool, Owen was forced out of Liverpool despite scoring nineteen goals in his last season at the club, during which he was injured.
Michael was shown the door at Anfield because clearly the club thought that they can do better without him otherwise there was no reason to sell such a good striker for peanuts like 8 million pounds transfer fee to Real Madrid. Now a point to be noted in this deal is the way Michael Owen was treated by Liverpool despite being a local youth talent and a fan favourite. When a football thinks that they can do better without a certain player, they have no reason to hold onto him.
One might wonder what this has got to do with Mascherano’s recent transfer to Barcelona. It does actually; Mascherano was bought by Liverpool from West Ham United in 2007 and the defensive midfielder quickly became an integral part of their starting line up due to his impressive performances. After spending three good years with the club, Mascherano opted to move away from English football in the summer of 2010 and his suitors included the likes of Barcelona and Inter Milan.
In August 2010, Liverpool’s league season started and Mascherano played the first fixture of the season for them but didn’t play the second match against Manchester City. Eventually his move came through and Barcelona agreed terms with Liverpool and the Argentinean captain to secure his signature. Roy Hodgson tried his best to keep the player at Liverpool but Mascherano decided otherwise. Now after the players move to Barcelona, Roy has come out and said indirectly that “It is just a selfish situation that they (players like Mascherano) have got something they want to do”. In all honesty, one should remember the “selfish” way that Liverpool acted in Michael Owen’s case; doesn’t Hodgson remember his own club’s previous moral standards? Clearly, Roy has his own agenda when it comes to remembering the past.
To put things into perspective for a little while, wasn’t Mascherano at liberty to move away from Liverpool?
In the past three years, Liverpool have not won a single trophy. They have only reached one cup final which they lost to A.C Milan. Last season the club finished in the seventh placed spot in the English Premier League and failed to qualify for the UEFA Champions League, Mascherano being a top rated footballer decided that he wanted to play at the highest level of football which his ability allows him to do and therefore considered a move away from Liverpool.
It is not as if in the past three years, Liverpool paid Mascherano his wages while the player just relaxed and didn’t do a thing. Mascherano got his wages from a club and like an honest employee; he served Liverpool to the best of his abilities. When he saw that his ambitions and the club’s aspirations weren’t in tandem, he decided to seek his future elsewhere, something a free person is completely entitled to do in a free world, unless Liverpool have turned into a 17th century empire.
Therefore, Mascherano had to do what he had to do, if Liverpool weren’t able to meet the standards that the player wished to play at then too bad for the former English champions.
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