The zero or two or four things we think we know for sure about Cesc Fábregas, Arsenal’s captain and sublime midfielder:
- He hates London’s weather and yearns to return and play someday for Barca, the club of his youth and the capital of his native Catalonia;
- He is fine with London’s weather and has no intention of leaving Arsenal;
- His “return” to Barca is just part of the Machiavellian posturing of those who hope to succeed Joan Laporta as Barca’s president;
- Arsenal has already agreed to a £60m transfer fee from Barcelona, a transaction to be consummated this summer.
It is now clearly illegal for the professional soccer press to write anything about Fábregas that does not reference at least two sides of this magic square. Goal.com would evaporate if it didn’t have the Cesc/Barca soap opera to poke daily. He has ceased to be a player and become solely a transfer window rumor, lighter than those horrible, nodding windsock puppets that went out of style at some Winter Olympics 10 or 12 years ago but are still in use at the Camp Nou.
So, bravo to the Guardian’s Paul Hayward for, if not ignoring the whole where-will-Cesc-go question, turning it ass over tea kettle — blaming the mess not on Barca’s meddling or Fábregas’ homesickness, but on the cult of devotion Wenger has created around his project and himself at Arsenal…and Fábregas terrible burden as chief altar boy, at the potential expense of his own career. Money quote:
Fábregas is 22 and much too young to be Wenger’s lecturer on the field. He has his own potential immortality to attend to. Arsenal’s campaign, meanwhile, is tantalisingly poised between a possible late-season flourish in a run of 12 winnable Premier League games and the discrediting of Wenger’s fidelity to this group of players. Too few warriors is a persistent diagnosis. The team’s most gifted artiste will know by May whether to pack up his Hampstead home or renew his vows to Wenger’s dream…Plainly the time has come for him to decide whether he is part of an unfolding miracle or a manager’s hallucination.
The religious metaphor is lovely, grisly and apt. The Arsenal Rapture has been once again delayed; and Wenger showing the strain of false prophecy (e.g., his inability to compliment any opponent this season, his eccentric backing of kick-ins to replace throw-ins). Any question about an Arsenal player now isn’t just a question about the player, and it’s not even about whether Wenger was wrong about the player — it’s always a question about whether Wenger is wrong, period, whether he can be trusted, whether he’s still a genius or was ever one, and whether we should gather yet again inside his church to await the Second Coming because this time, by God, he’s got the date right. The smell of Grape Kool-Aid is getting stronger at Emirates Stadium.
Except that this time, it really is about Wenger, and Fábregas’ faith in him. Maybe. If so, Barca will win him. He can captain Barca Lite in the fog and damp, or he can enjoy the real thing. Faith is nourishing, for a while. Barceloneta’s paella fills you up and keeps you coming back.
(Image credit: wonker/Flickr through a Creative Commons license.)
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