The EPL. Not so Golden?

Now don’t cut my head off if this report just happens to resurrect itself in a few weeks with the transfer window closing around then and this whole Kaka business, of him going to Manchester City for 100 million pounds returns to the English ragsheets, but as of right now the deal is off.

Ricky will get to kiss his Milan badge again, the ultra hunger-strikes can be called off and Silvio Berlusconi can replaster his ear to ear grin on again even though we all know that he would have welcomed a 100 million pound injection of cash. Milan need the money, I know that, and they certainly need to retool their team, but losing arguably their best player and a poster-boy for the Milan cause once Paolo Maldini finally decides to go to stud, is not the right answer.

Manchester City on the other hand, while misfiring for the Balon d’or moon, have instead continued to land another round of over-priced, laughably untalented British players like Scott Parker, Wayne Bridge and Craig Bellamy. The newspapers will no doubt blame iton  Kaka’s lack of ambition, or some very personal or religious reasons why staying in Milan might be more attractive to the Brazilian than joining  the second team in Manchester might. They might even blame the Citizen’s lack of current or historic form or they might even blame Sparky’s problems with the Brazilian contingent already at City. Once the fervor dies down though, you might start to see another round of the same sort of nonsense, this time directed not at Ricky Kaka but at others in his ability range: Cristiano Ronaldo, Kun Aguero, Lionel Messi, Zlatan Ibrahimovich amongst others. What they won’t understand is that Kaka, nor any of these others will go to England to play in their prime.

The fact is, since the inception of the English Premier League, there have been only 4 Ballon D’or winners who have played in England. 2 came out of the youth ranks of Manchester United and Liverpool (Cristiano Ronaldo and Michael Owen) and 2 others came to England well past their prime (George Weah and Andriy Shevchenko who both played for Chelsea).  Italian clubs had 8 winners during that time while Spanish clubs had 6. Only Jean-Pierre Papin for Marseilles and Matthias Sammer for Dortmund played elsewhere and while they both left their respected clubs they eventually played for one of the black striped clubs in Milano.

History is telling us something that well know but are ignoring. Players come to England for the money, for that one last paycheck to end their careers, but if they’re looking for glory at the height of their abilities, they will move to Italy or Spain.