Cesc Fabregas to Barcelona: Barçagrad: A Lesson in New Age Propaganda

This is an article I wrote last year after the World Cup describing the way Barcelona dealt with Arsenal in order to acquire Cesc Fabregas. It featured on my blog. Read on:

Please do comment at the end of the article. Thanks.

Gautam Viswanathan with some very, very choice words for—apparently—one of the best teams in the world. Now that the transfer window has shut firmly, I've got something to say about the way FC "Funny Business" Barcelona have gone about adding players to their squad, and ultimately failed. You all know what I'm talking about: the Francesc Fabregas to Barcelona saga, which was more long winded than an opera and more tragic—for Barca—than ancient Greek theatre.

Look at the following verse:

Slav'sya, Otechestvo nashe svobodnoye, Druzhby narodov nadyozhny oplot! Partiya Lenina—sila narodnaya Nas k torzhestvu kommunizma vedyot!

Glory to our free Fatherland, The stronghold of the friendship of the peoples! The Party of Lenin is the power of the people, It leads us to the triumph of Communism.

What you see up there is the refrain of the national anthem of the Soviet Union. One might now question me and ask whether I've gone bonkers, because clearly this anthem looks out of place here. Well, no, FC Barcelona have been acting like the erstwhile Soviet Union, with propaganda that would make Lenin proud, antics that would make Stalin go green with envy, thinly veiled threats that would have Khrushchev sign up for threat lessons and a lack of respect that Gorbachev would waggle his finger at.

Now, the fact of the matter remains that Arsene Wenger—shrewd as he is—purloined Cesc from Barcelona's La Masia youth academy at the age of 16, taking advantage of laws in Spain that allow players to sign professional contracts only at the age of 17. Barca didn't like being left all high and dry and knew they had lost one of their brightest prospects. Cesc was slated to be the heir to Patrick Vieira at Arsenal, and the presence of trophies being made conspicuous only by their absence, coupled with the young Spaniard's frustration at the lack of them, made Barcelona play their hand.

While the germ of the fact remains that Fabregas was frustrated, there was absolutely no reason for Barca to sensationalise the entire saga. But then again, since they inadvertently went into Soviet-mode, one Barcelona player after another decided to air their views on the subject. Like a propaganda machine, Barcelona players and the press began to gradually—but not so subtly—breach the topic of Arsenal's skipper moving back to Catalonia.

Fabregas himself was aware of the hullabaloo that would follow, or so it seemed when he said he wanted his status resolved before the World Cup. It was Xavi—great midfield general Xavi—who said he'd love for Fabregas to join Barca, and then the floodgates began to open. Throughout the World Cup, La Furia Roja—European Championship winners, by the way—were pestering Fabregas like a swarm of flies that has just seen a candy apple  

From the time all the speculation started right up to now, Barcelona press, players and officials alike have been crowing about the fact that Fabregas would be joining them over the summer. Distinguished players such as Xavi Hernandez, Carles Puyol, Gerard Pique, Andres Iniesta, Lionel Messi and new Barca signing David Villa kept releasing statement after statement about the entire saga.

Spanish newspapers—which I would put in a compost heap to make manure for my garden—such as AS, Marca and Sport continually spoke of "secret meetings" and the top brass themselves said they wouldn't break the bank to sign him. When one wants a player of Cesc Fabregas' quality, you need to break open your piggy bank with a sledgehammer and hope you have enough. It's like a child pestering his mum for strawberry ice cream.

Get the message, sonny: Mommy isn't going to give you ice cream. Thinly veiled threats from Xavi and Pique did absolutely nothing to faze Chairman Peter-Hill Wood and Arsene Wenger, who knew Fabregas wouldn't leave anyway, decided to play hardball by raising the price for their superstar to 80 million euros. 

Throughout the banging of the propaganda drum by the Spanish side, which reached it's zenith when the Spain national football team came home to a deafening reception where Pepe Reina and Pique forced a Barcelona jersey onto Fabregas, which was quickly played down by the Arsenal skipper who said he was proud to win the World Cup as an Arsenal player, the forces of good kept rallying behind Arsenal.

Former Gunners Robert Pires, Matthieu Flamini, Thierry Henry and Alexander Hleb threw their weight behind Fabregas staying at Arsenal. Current Arsenal squad players Thomas Vermaelen, Johan Djourou and Theo Walcott said playing with a World Cup winner in a side was a very rare privilege, while Denilson effectively slapped Barcelona in the face by slamming their war of attrition for Fabregas. Gunners legends Ray Parlour and Kenny Sansom also said there was no way Fabregas would join the Catalan club.

As the Barca camp began to get desperate, the truth began to slowly filter, when Sporting Director Andoni Zubizaretta was rather downcast about the whole shabang, President Sandro Rosell spoke of stratospheric debt playing its hand in sabotaging the deal and Pep Guardiola rather shamefacedly in a tail-between-his-legs sort of way admitting defeat.

When it became obvious that they wouldn't be able to sign Fabregas, they lamented that he had "missed out on a fabulous opportunity since Barcelona would now embark on a golden era" and began to insult Arsenal instead, saying they would be out of trophy contention by January and Fabregas would be forced to leave.

When replacements were searched for, Roy Hodgson was absolutely livid with the way Barcelona handled the Javier Mascherano transfer, with Lionel Messi saying Liverpool should be "humane" and let go of Javier. I've got a question for these titches: Who do they think they are? What gives them the right to treat Arsenal with so much arrogance? Just because they've done two successive trebles doesn't mean they can treat everyone else like a dog who rolled on something smelly.

Truth be told, Barcelona were really desperate to get Fabregas, and had been smarting with embarrassment since 2003, when Fabregas came to England, became the youngest player to score in the Carling Cup etc etc. To let such a top player slip out of their hands obviously left them rather pink, and now they know Arsenal won't let him go. I'm only glad he didn't leave, since he would've received the same brickbats that Mascherano did from the Liverpool faithful.

Even now, Barcelona haven't given up their pursuit of Cesc, with reports already coming in from "reliable" sources of Fabregas going there next year. I'd like to have just one day when there is no Cesc to Barca nonsense in the tabloids (not newspapers, tabloids). Barcelona made a whole lot of noise about Fabregas, but they didn't count on facing the shrewdest, most inscrutable manager in the world: Arsene Wenger, who knew that noise is just, well, noise.

The entire tirade reeks of disrespect of Fabregas as a player and of Arsenal as a team. When one thinks of Barcelona, one really doesn't expect this. In June, Barcelona Vice Presidential Candidate Josep Maria Bartolomeu said it would be "very easy" to sign Cesc. Two words: Dream On.