The quotes this morning from the Mail of Cesc Fabregas talking to Real Madrid and turning them down to stay on at Arsenal are quite interesting:
On his conversation with Calderon and sporting director Predrag Mijatovic, Fabregas said:
“I have talked with them because they seem to me like spectacular people and they made a great effort to get me to sign.
“It was a very difficult decision for me but with Thierry Henry leaving Arsenal, I feel that I can’t leave the club that has done so much for me. I have a great responsibility this season and I can’t wait to get started and try to win things.
“It made me very excited that a club as big as Madrid were interested in me and that made it a very difficult decision. It’s a chance that doesn’t come around very often but I am only 20 and I have to keep improving and I want to do that at Arsenal.”
Addressing fears that Wenger may not commit himself to Arsenal beyond next summer, when his contract ends, Fabregas added:
“I have every confidence that the manager will sign a new deal.”
Did Wenger (and Arsenal) actually allow Fabregas and his agent to talk to Calderon and Predrag Mijatovic? If that actually happened, then two things come to mind:
- Real Madrid must have been offering an amazing amount of money to Arsenal to get that sort of access.
- Is it possible that the extra-long contract Fab has signed with Arsenal has a buy-out clause that Real Madrid triggered and thus were allowed ‘official’ access to his agent and him?
What do you think?
thanks to Arseblog for pointing me to the story.
All the conjecture is immaterial as he has turned down probably the best offer he could have got.
What’s equally important it has revealed that Arsene is going to renew his contract.
Think positive for once !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
3. Maybe all is bull? Marca story from the start?
I think they have just taken quotes from Marca and as we all know they talk nonsense
It’s the Spanish teams all over again, is there one rule for English teams and one rule for them??. Barca have hounded Henry for 3 years and finaly got the player, with no respect for the laws of the game at all. Now it’s Fabregas.
I thought the laws stated unless the players team agrees to contact, the approaching club is breaking the rules by speaking to the player. I can’t see Arsenal would put a clause in his contract allowing him to do so, although stranger things have happend in football, one springs to mind 12 months ago…..”I have thought long and hard about this, but I am going to be a Gooner for life!” Apparently he meant a fan!
Happy times fellow Gooners, I really do believe this year is make or break!!!!
it sounds like cesc and wenger are holding out for barcelona next season! if arsene is to renew his contract its going to include a get out clause at the end of each season, now whats the point in that they should offer him what he wants and sign him up for life now, so we can attract big players and keep hold of our future stars
I think that Madrid & Barca have been getting away with
murder for too long, unsettling players that they have their eyes on – in various european leagues – with their underhand tactics, then moving in for the kill once they
scent blood.
I really wish that UEFA would do something about it, but I’m not holding my breath.
Still, Arsene must be doing something right in terms of player recruitment if, almost every year, the major european clubs attempt to swoop like vultures for Arsenal’s better players.
I must point out that when major players at Arsenal eventually leave the club, it is only after they’ve given the best years of their footballing careers to the club (22 to 29), and are considered disposable by Arsene, who does his best in the circumstances to get a good deal for them in terms of transfer fees.
£13m & £16m for Vieira & Henry respectively at the ages of 29 & 30 is good business.
It is pretty obvious that Real Madrid spoke to Cesc without permission. If he had a clause in his contract we would all know about it by now and Arsenal would have rejected whatever sum was aimed at the having already lost Herny this season.
I am getting pissed off with Real Madrid. It seems to be one rule for them and another for the rest. Just because they are a massive club they feel they have the power to do whatever they want and on many occasions they get their way. I can see the same happening with Reyes, agreement was if Real wanted to sign him after the loan period the cost would be 14 million and now real are refusing to pay more than 6.5 million, not even half the sum agreed!! The player has it in his head he wants to stay at Real refusing to go back to London, so what can Arsenal do? they have no choice but to sell. Oh if you haven’t realised Real are getting on my tits!
By the way Kalix999 i know what you mean, half the time Marca make up stories, (eventhough they announced Saviola would be signing for Real in April!) but on this occasion it was true as you can see from the article above Cesc has come out and said that he rejected real. What a true Gunner!
Obviously, Calderon and Cesc Fabregas would not have made it public that they spoke if it was behind Arsenal’s back. They would have taken the Mourinho/A. Cole route.
Who cares how they spoke? With all the going ons, its relieving that cesc told them to ***k off(albeit very politely). But I agree, Real Madrid (and barca to a certain extend) have a certain immunity when it comes to bending rules in their favour. About how barca hounded henry, i guess they are still mad how we got cesc from right under their noses……….
TO: Magneto & iqnadirshah!
Pursuing a player like Real Madrid has been doing with Kaka and Barcelona have been doing with Henry is not against FIFA regulations. They are not tapping up the players but only trying to sign him and in their hunt use the media.
Its disrespectful towards the clubs that own the player but it is certainly not illegal so your argument that Madrid & Barca have some kind of immunity is flawed.
—
Ahmed:
There was no foul play with Cesc because he obviously would not have made it public and Arsenal would have been crying foul like they did with Chelsea when they were tapping up Ashley Cole.
Redondo:6, I am sorry I do not agree with you. If what you are saying is true Real would have had to have a bid accepted by Arsenal for Cesc and if a bid was accepted that meant Arsenal were willing to sell. If Arsenal were willing to sell Cesc, Cesc would not have felt valued by Arsenal and so would have left. Real Madrid do use the media to tempt players (which in my view is still bending the rules) but in this case they actually spoke to Cesc without permission. Arsenal are not making a fuss because Cesc has decided to stay, this was not the case with Cashely Cole who wanted to move to Chelsea for the $$$$$.
REDONDO 6,
it may not be illegal but it is very disrespectful to arsenal as what barca and real do is try to make both the player and the club uncomfortable.
i dont know why these spanish teams are like this but they seem to think that they are so much better than teams like milan(kaka), arsenal(cesc), and chelsea(robben). i think the problem with spain is their president system, they need to land some big name players at real and barca and so go all out to get them. remember laporta promising beckham and calderon with fabregas?
just because real madrid have a great history does not give them a devine right to any player, at the moment they dont look like winning anything next season. their best players are too old and their younger players are mostly second rate. sayin tha they talked to wenger was absolute bull, as he only works within the rules.
finally, as a big barca fan, do you really believe that cesc would go to real? he would have to be respectful about saying no, but surely wouldnt have entertained the thought for a second.
TO KNOW IF IT WAS A LEGAL APPROACH BY REAL, IT NEEDS TO BE CONFIRMED BY ARSENAL, WHICH IT HAS NOT BEEN.
Calderons a yiddo!!!!! he is working as an agent to wind your mob right up in time for your break or break season..i know that should be make or break but lets face facts guys 4th place is up for grabs this year and thats gotta hurt when you think of where we both were 2 years ago
I agree with RobM
GOONER10:
The presidential system and club ownership is surely better then English one, seeing as Real Madrid and most of the Spanish clubs can not be bought and owned by a person or corporation. The Spanish clubs are latterly owned by the fans.
About your claim that Cesc not wanting to join Madrid because of his Barca history is just weak, seeing as you have no idea what Cesc wants personally. He said that Wenger had convinced him to stay, do you honestly think that if Wenger had not assured him to stay, he would have remained? He would have already been presented as a Real Madrid player by now.
Luis Figo was the Barcelona Capitian, the most adored player in Catalonia and had 10000000x more leigency towards Barca but yet he still left for Real Madrid.
ilovefootball.com:
Your claims are not coherent. Why would Real Madrid comment on it if they spoke to Cesc behind Arsenals back and even worse, why would Cesc comment on it.
Its not hard to picture Arsenal accepting a bid for Cesc seeing as they sold Henry so extremely cheap.
REDONDO 6,
i was just commenting on one aspect of the spanish presidential system, i was not saying that the whole system was flawed, but i have backed my argument up with good evidence. maybe your comments on cesc’s thoughts and the cesc/figo comparison have credibility, but the rest of my argument is right.
may i just say that although they won la liga, their best payers are past their best and the 25-30 year olds and youngsters are 2nd rate ( guti is the most over rated player in the world) and without consistency in management they will get nowhere. arsenal on the other hand, have bright young players like cesc, denilson, van persie and in a few years vela and merida, to play with experienced players like toure, gilberto etc. real, at the start of the season had a two year gameplan, win the league. i am not disputing that higauin( spelling?) is not a good player, but with a better manager and better potential cesc made the right decision to stay. REPLY NOW REDONDO.
If Arsenal don’t succeed well this coming season you can expect Barca to put a serious bid for Cesc next year. I’m thinking Henry might have a hand in trying to convince him to come over (no doubt depending on what kind of season he has as well).
I think all Arsenal fans (myself included) have to come to terms with the fact that we will lose Cesc eventually, unless we mount a serious challenge for the Champions League &/or the Premiership anytime soon & unless we can get some high profile signings in the future.
I am not criticising Wenger’s style. I think its brilliant the way he has developed players like Henry & Viera. But there comes a time when the battle on & off the pitch becomes more psychological than anything else. Players who become really good think they are too big for this club & will eventually leave unless the club management shows them that they are serious about keeping them & growing exponentially (like Chelsea has). I’m not saying its correct but that’s the way this game goes.
I would like to see Wenger balance his signings of relative unknowns by at least getting one or two big names every year (obviously they have to fit with his gameplans) coz i think that’s the only way we are going to keep the current crop of talent in the longterm.
I guess this a problem with having a club that is mostly comprised of foriegn players. Eventually they all become antsy & want to play regularly in mainland Europe sometime. Again, that’s the psycho-social factor coming into it.
If Wenger leaves then all bets are off.
To gooner10:
You claim that the best players are over 30? .. Which is false considering no Real Madrid fan thinks that Raul, Cannavaro, Guti, Salgado and Emerson are “The best players” .. Ruud Van Nistelrooy on the other hand IS one of the best who is over 30 and the only one.
You mentioned Denilson, Vela, Merida who don’t play top flight football and are only potentials so i will not comment on that seeing as they have done anything to warrant an actual discussion.
Anyway since cesc has commited himself, i think it is safe to think that wenger also will stay, even though he evaded the question after the friendly with barnet
its been 2 days since we’ve had an article, wtf is going, i hope they havent abandend this site.
dan – Sorry about that, a bit swamped 🙂
abandon SL? You’ll have to buy it off me for that.
Hilarious how high-and-mighty fans of English teams – especially Arsenal – get.
One rule for Spanish teams/Madrid/Barça etc and another for English teams? Come off it! Arsenal themselves have been forced to retroactively compensate teams for nicking players whom they shouldnt have been talking to in the first place. Just because the players in question are young and not world-famous doesn’t make the “crime” any different.
And what about Chelsea? Yes you can say they were fined for it, but then again, neither Madrid nor Barça, as far as I know, has ever had the cheek to have a meeting with a player of another club and his agent, in public, in plain view of the press.
And Liverpool? and Man Utd? And clubs from everywhere? If you think that clubs, 90% of time or more, don’t feel out their targets to see if their interested in moving before sitting down to negotiate a transfer fee, you’re naive.
Chelsea were offering Makelele a vastly superior wage long before they were ever given permission to talk to him by Madrid. It’s hilariously hypocritical to see English clubs whine like pussies when other clubs behave in the exact manner they do when it suits them. And their are plenty more examples I can cite.
The fact of the matter is that these tapping up laws are anachronistic and ignored virtually all the time.
lol ahmed, gota a bit over my self there.:-(
AVRV,
back up your argument about arsenal please.
AVRV, about your info about makelele. First of all i dont think its true. Secondly he suffered enough and more of racial insults in madrid. Thirdly, makelele and hierro were made the scapegoats for their CL defeat to Juventus. About Arsenal, if you’re referring to the episode on cesc, he wasnt signed to any team, the barca people hadnt given him a senior contract yet when wenger signed him. But the fact remains that madrid and barca bend rules to their liking a lot. Plus they do get away with it….
iqnadirshah:
That is bullshit! I’m sorry but can you back up your claim? I thought not, its pretty infuriating seeing someone make such ridiculous claims when in fact the reason he left was because the club refused to cave into his demands of wage similar to those of Beckham, Ronaldo, Figo and Zizou. He left Real Madrid BECAUSE they did not want to give him €180.000+ a week.
gooner10:
Arsenal took Cesc from Barcelona illegal in which, Barcelona reported to FIFA and UEFA and sued Arsenal. So because Arsenal did not want to go to court because the evidence was against them they chose to pay €2 million + Gio Van Brockhorst in compensation for stealing Cesc Fabregas. That was tapping up and Arsenal admitted fault.
All these youngster Arsenal are so proud of are not their own product but from clubs in Spain, Africa and South America and so on but they still take credit for it.
Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester United have all tapped up players at some point, weather it may be with Robben, Hargreaves, Fabregas and Ashely Cole.
Manchester United and Alex Ferguson were holding meetings with Owen Hargreaves despite Bayern Munchen not giving them permission to talk to the player but surprisingly, Ahmed did not write a article about that.
redondo and avrv – this is NOT a forum where real madrid and english fans slug it out over who’s right and who’s wrong.
On Makelele – both are right – Makelele didn’t get the respect he deserved and he wasn’t paid what he asked for.
On Fab – Arsenal signed him but bad to pay compensation to Barca because of it.
On Hargreaves – you do remember that there were reports that Bayern had agreed to the deal before pulling out of it at the last minute, right?
And i wrote a LOT about the Hargreaves saga 🙂
Anyway, like I said at the start, don’t make this into spain vs england.
About the racial insults, though he didnt come out openly, he did hint it a few times. Since its spain and its madrid, i’ll give him the benefit of doubt. Both makele and hierro were offloaded after that game and the club claimed their main aim was to improve their aging defence. Remember perez saying that “we sold a player who could kick the ball ten feet and bought one who could kick it some 100 feet(about beckham)”. Do you need anymore backup for my ‘claim’ ?
What I need is for you to stop being an ignorant cunt. Excuse my language.
There were never any “hints”. That is false, pure and simple. Because it’s Spain and Madrid you give him the benefit of the doubt regarding a claim or “hint” he never made? Let me inform you of some facts you’ve either consciously or unconsciously decided to overlook.
Real Madrid was fielding black players in its lineup long before there were any playing professional football, at any level, in England.
Real Madrid was fielding black ENGLISH players long before the vast majority of clubs in England were.
Real Madrid and its fans have never been fined or warned by any governing body, on any occasion, for racist abuse or behavior.
Spain, and Madrid, have the most progressive, pro-immigration laws in the European Union.
While there have been instances of racist abuse in some spanish stadiums (mainly the uh-uh monkey chants directed at Eto’o in Getafe, Zaragoza, or at Roberto Carlos at the Nou Camp), this is a fraction of a segment of the population which is in and of itself a fragment of the population at large. To paint the entire country, as well as its institutions, as racist, based on this is a bit of a pot/kettle situation. On the other hand, in the Bernabeu Eto’o was given a standing ovation when he scored a hat trick there with Mallorca.
Many people seem to have it in their heads that because there was racist abuse at that Spain-England friendly in the Bernabeu a few years ago**, that Real Madrid is by association connected in some degree with racism (despite all the things I’ve mentioned above). I do not follow nor understand this connect-the-dots schoolboy logic. There was racist abuse at an England-Turkey match a few years back at the Stadium of Light, I believe. Does this make Sunderland a racist club?
FC Barcelona has had far more instances of racist abuse at its matches – in addition to matches being suspended because of objects being thrown, and Real Madrid players being hit by missiles on two separate occasions. iqnadirshah why is it that you are so quick to associate Real Madrid will all the evils in the world and not, say, FC Barcelona, despite all the facts to the contrary. Not a pawn of media stereotypes now, are you?
Regarding the other things you said, I completely fail to see how they have anything to do with the Makelele issue. Perez made a huge mistake not so much in selling him, but in never properly replacing him. You mentioned a quote Perez made (which is true) but I also distinctly remember Makelele handing in a doctor’s note saying he was depressed, due to his insufficient valuation by the club, and couldn’t train, and then promptly driving home in his Ferrari.
…
Ahmed – the list of posts is there, I just made a response to some of the nonsense listed above. If they have the right to start up petty, hypocritical high-horse rants I have the right to respond.
** I was at that match, sitting in the 2nd tier behind the south goal. Yes you could hear the chants being made, they almost entirely came from the southeast corner of the stadium, but the vast majority of people in the stadium that night, myself included, made no such noise, many people were whistling those who did, and I remember seeing the televised audio and thinking that it sounds 10x louder there than it did in the actual stadium, which has a lot to do with the placement of the microphones around the pitch. Not excusing anything, just giving a different take which I think was consumately ignored in the controversy following the match.
iqnadirshah:
There was a hint? .. Is that seriously your reply? That there was a hint? .. You give me a quote by Perez and tell me thats enough? ..
Makalele wanted more money, they club refused to give him, he stopped coming to practice, Chelsea came in and paid €28mill for him. End of story, there was no racism.
Ahmed:
The article is about Real Madrid and Arsenal, A English and Spanish team, if we can not discuss it then why is there a comment box?
Chill boys, you mentioned some facts that i didnt know. Agreed(especially that bit about the ferrari). Still i would associate rasicm much more rapidly with spain than with any other country(especially after their national coach was caught on video mentioning some not too favourable worlds about other teams), get offended if you want to about that. The issue is the bending of rules to their favour. According to what you said arsenal got punished. Did you see Real or Barca getting punished? Dont think so……..
And arvr real was fielding the best players long before anyone because they got away with a lot of poaching,(classic case- Alfredo diStefano)..
what a gunner, let all of us arsenal fans welcome palacio, richards/c.davies, di maria & finally the wonderkid c.vela premiership crown 07/08 here we come!