Home » Blog » Football: Another one bites the dust

Football: Another one bites the dust

December 03, 2012

I don’t follow English football as closely as I used to before but that is not to say that I’m in the dark. I still do from a distance. If you are an English football (aka as English Premier League - EPL) fan, then you know that Arsenal has been having a draught season that has prolonged for too many years to even bother counting; and therein lays my reason for not following the EPL as much as I used to during the days of Thierry Henry. All the same, as an Arsenal fan, I thought we had issues until I heard about our cool blue brothers, Chelsea, then I realized we truly are patient, tolerant and very forgiving as a team (and fans), otherwise by now, Grandpa Wenger would have been somewhere relaxing in the countryside.

In case you don’t know what I’m on about, earlier in the week, on Wednesday 21st November 2012 to be precise, the man who bankrolls Chelsea football Club, the ruthless Roman Abramovich, fired Roberto Di Matteo, the Manager, after his team lost 3-0 while playing Juventus during a Champions League match on Tuesday, 20th November 2012. Di Matteo was given a made THE Manager in June after operating as the assistant manager since March, when yet another cruel dismissal of the then Chelsea Manager, Andre Villas-Boas (AVB) was effected. AVB is currently the Tottenham boss.

When Di Matteo took over the team as an assistant Manager then, the team was in total shambles and no one expected them to recover.  Together with this team, they beat all odds to bag two trophies; his was a story of from zero to hero in a span of four months. When the 2012/2012 season began a couple of months ago, Chelsea started with a bang; scooping every three points they could, until the unlucky streak started following them, leading to Di Matteo’s unceremonious sucking by his bosses, just six months after he was made Manager. I think in Roman Abramovich’s mind, Di Matteo had turned from being Manager to Damager overnight.

I can’t help but wonder to myself, is it really possible to satisfy this man Abramovich? How many more will he fire before he can settle for one manager who will be consistently there? In fact as I write this article, Rafa Benitez has already been appointed as the interim Manager till the end of the season, but again I can’t help but wonder how long he will stay before he too is shown the door. At this rate, we might be seeing another Manager should Chelsea lose their next game…. I chuckle to myself as I compare the number of managers Chelsea has had over the last couple of years against, Arsenal’s trophy count within the same period. Thinking about it in this context actually makes me laugh out.

Anyway, coming back to the issue at hand, I don’t know about you but I think Abramovich has been unfair to Di Matteo. The latter played a major role in bringing sanity back to the team last season, which saw them finish at the top of two different leagues. However, from the look of things it seems like all that didn’t count for Abramovich. Either that or maybe his brain suffers from serious selective amnesia where it only chooses to see the wrongs but not the rights. It tends to erase all the good that has been done by the managers, and forces him to see only the bad.

How could he have forgotten so quickly the big role Di Matteo played in re-writing last season’s outcome? But even more importantly, how can he forget there is something called fate?  Football, like any other game, is a very unpredictable game; in fact it is so unpredictable that a book called “Football: It’s a Funny Old Game” was written by Stephen Blake and Andrew John.  I recommend this book for Abramovich.

Before you can stone Abramovich for “suffering” selective amnesia, if you were really honest with yourself, how many times have you had the same “condition” in your life? How many times have you “forgotten” the positive things that have been said/done for you by someone, in favor of attacking that person for one wrong thing they may have done or forgotten to do? In fact, maybe as you read this article right now you are probably not even talking to your wife. Why? Maybe because she forgot to iron the shirt you wanted to wear to work on Friday. Something that doesn’t change how you take breakfast, lunch or dinner, but you make such a big fuss out of it, forgetting all the monumental sacrifices she makes every day for you and the family you have built together. 

A smart man would have kissed her on the forehead and told her “its ok honey. I know you are tired. I’ll wear a different shirt”, and that story would end right there. For the selfish man, he would rant and rave the whole evening, jumping around the house like a Kangaroo or a toad to assert his point as to why she should not have forgotten to iron his shirt. Give the woman a break. She is a human being and like everyone else, she makes mistakes. Get yourself a robot that you can program, and only you will have to blame if the robot misses out on a task, after all, what you command it is what it does, right?

What I am trying to convey via this hypothetical scenario is that as human beings we need to be tolerant, patient and understanding of each other. Life is like a football match, and unfortunately we lack the luxury of having Octopus Paul predict which one of our moves will be the winning move. Anything can happen in this football match called Life. What makes it easy to cope with its unpredictableness is knowing that you have people around you who support you; people who appreciate you for all the things you have done and are still doing, and not bring you down for the few misses you make; people who are ready to hold you or pick you up when you fall, instead of pressing you down to the ground like you are in a wrestling match; people who are ready to accept you for you, and not for what you have to give them. I’m sure you get my gist.

I believe the world would be a much better place to live in if we appreciated each other more, if we inspired and motivated one another to be the best we could be, and if we worked together to achieve both common and individual goals instead of working against each other causing us to miss out on them all. Unlike Abramovich, let us be more accommodating. Let us learn to give each other another chance to better ourselves, and when we are tempted to pull a “Di Matteo” stunt on someone, let’s strive to overcome the selective amnesia syndrome and choose to remember the good in every person we live with, work with, meet with every other day, and in the process make the world we live in a friendlier place to be.

As we start a new week I am sure you will face a scenario like Chelsea did on Tuesday. My challenge to you this week is to remember this: The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.”

Just so that you know, I don’t agree with Abramovich’s decision. I think Di Matteo was a great Manager and given more time and room to do what he was meant to do, he would have turned that team around. Having said all that, is there a way Arsenal can get him onboard? He might be what we need to end the draught and experience a golden storm…..Just a thought.

Have a peaceful week.

PS: This article appeared on the 25th November 2012, in one of the Weekly Newspapers in Tanzania, "Guardian on Sunday", under my column known as Thoughts in Words.

views

19781

Add comment

Share This Post