On Thursday, FIFA President Sepp Blatter belched out one of his periodically idiotic opinions when he said that he thought Manchester United’s Cristiano Ronaldo, who currently earns around $240,000 a week, was a modern-day slave. Now, in what Ian Herbert calls “an utterance as remarkable as any he has issued this summer,” Ronaldo has agreed, and said that his club should release him to play for Real Madrid.
Given that this transfer saga has been stretching on tediously for the whole summer, perhaps United could let the player go so that soccer journalists can start writing about something else again. In the meantime, writes Herbert, “Ronaldo’s assertion will prompt as much indignation as Blatter’s did when he said footballers, tied to longer contracts since the Bosman ruling on transfers, were enslaved and should be given greater freedom to move on.”
The player also revealed that the ankle surgery he underwent earlier this week will likely keep him out of action for up to 12 weeks (if only it would keep him out of the news, too), and that he has yet to agree personal terms with Madrid, both factors that possibly point to him staying at Old Trafford for another year. “If and when Ronaldo does return to Premier League action,” Herbert speculates, “his suggestion that he is a modern-day slave will leave him liable to receive a colorful response from opposing supporters.”<