Financial prudence: Why is FC Barcelona willing to pay over the odds for Alexis Sanchez?

Come transfer season, at least one club pays over the odds for a single player. Ever since the emergence of cash-rich Abu Dhabi-based oil-billionaires on the football scene, that distinction is usually held by Manchester City. Some of the more notable flops purchased by the blue half of Manchester, Jo, Emanuel Adebayor, Roque Santa Cruz, Edin Dzeko and pretty much the whole squad bar Carlos Tevez, Yaya Toure, David Silva and Adam Johson. Not to belittle Manchester City’s recent success but barely anyone except the latter four are worth the money splashed on them.

Not ever was James Milner worth close to 30 million Euro to begin with. In transfer window that saw David Villa move to FC Barcelona for 40 million there’s no reasonable explanation why James Milner was worth 75% of El Guaje. But then again, the market for English players is and has always been hugely inflated. Manchester United just bought Phil Jones for more than 16 million GBP, hello?

But enough of my discourse in English transfer madness. Unfortunately, the market for football players cannot bust like the CDS (credit default swap) in its heyday around 2008, 2009. Perhaps the next couple of sentences will come off as insensitive and might offend a couple of people but even though I tried to work around it – I just think what I’m about to write hits the nail on its head. Present-day football transfers is the new millennium’s slave trade.

So called super-agent Kia Joorabichan used to "own" Manchester City’s Carlos Tevez and FC Barcelona’s own Javier Mascherano. C’mon that’s slavery; at the very least it’s some sort of human trafficking, even if it’s just the football rights. The money generated by these sales doesn’t stay in the game (the football industry), it is transferred straight into the coffers of a selected few individuals. The parallels are there. A couple of centuries ago African citizens were sold from Africa to America, who then went on to work at cotton plantations to produce goods for the European market.

Nowadays shady businessmen secure the sporting rights of South American football prodigies in order to sell their "talents" to….you guessed it, the European football market. It’s quite disgusting that such practices are still legitimate. The line should be drawn somewhere, there should be a ceiling for transfer fees to be spend on a single player. While shady and sketchy agents as well as Abu Dhabi billionaires do their best to inflate the market, buyers and sellers are joining the transfer frenzy too.

Transfers are quite simple; it’s Economics 101, supply and demand. But if reports are to be believed FC Barcelona are seriously entertaining the idea of paying 28 million Euro of hard cash (which the club obviously do not have) the amount x in variables and a player for Alexis Sanchez. Has the world gone mad in my absence? Didn’t we learn from the recent Zlatan Ibrahimovic debacle? That much money for a player who, in all likelihood, will warm the bench for Messi, Villa & Pedro. Where’s the financial prudency our beloved President, Sandro Rosell, talked about?

Let me get that straight, Cesc Fabregas, arguably the only player not currently on the books of FC Barcelona who would fit in perfectly with Pep’s squad, is not worth 40 million Euro but Alexis Sanchez is??? That said, if FC Barcelona isn’t prepared to pay 40 million for Cesc, why are they considering paying close to that amount for Sanchez?

I know, Englishmen are hugely overpriced but there’s an English fella lurking around who goes by the name of Ashley Young. The Aston Villa man would be available for roughly 18 million Euro (still a lot of cash for a player whose contract runs out in a year) and something tells me the Premier League side would gladly sell to FC Barcelona than Manchester United. What is it with FC Barcelona and overpaying for Serie A darlings?

Every now and then….let me rephrase that, I always question the sanity of FC Barcelona’s board of directors, especially the sporting director. According to Mr. Rosell’s rhetoric Cesc isn’t worth as much as Arsenal FC is holding out for because he didn’t win any titles with the Gooners. Fair enough. But tell me, what exactly did Alexis Sanchez win in Italy?

Why don’t FC Barcelona just cancel the negotiations and let Sanchez move to the more greener pastures of Manchester? I’ve never been to Manchester but I frequently visit Barcelona and from what I can gather on the net, Manchester isn’t very green. For all I know, not even Manchester City’s best player, Carlos Tevez, is happy there.

Paying close to 40 million Euro for Alexis Sanchez and selling Bojan for a meager 10 – 12 million. Tell me, what isn’t wrong here? I know FC Barcelona prides itself on being a buying-club but then again, there are also people who pride themselves on being ignorant.

Just because you can, it doesn’t mean you have to.

To quote Kal Penn’s outrageously funny Kumar character from the Harold and Kumar franchise "Just because you’re hung like a moose doesn’t mean you gotta do porn"

Harold and Kumar - Scene III

Why oh why can’t FC Barcelona just walk away from this deal????

Yours truly,

Sebastian

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