Robinho attacks Man City team-mates. Or how to spin a story from nothing
THE richest club in the world (aka Man City) are on the express highway to becoming the new Chelski, and so the tabloids are desperate for some good City stories.
These stories come in two delicious flavours:
1. Bullshit transfer rumours: _________ (insert name of world-class star here; Kaka, for example) wants to join the City revolution. Yeah, of course he does.
2. Bullshit ‘Unease at City’ rumours: Aw, look how how unhappy ‘megastar’ Robinho is to be playing for ‘the wrong Manchester’.
In the wake of City’s 1-0 defeat to Man Yoo in the Manc derby on Sunday, sports editors pounced on an innocuous quote by Robinho:
“City have good players but the mentality of a small side. What they lack is the mentality of champions.”
Fair enough – City do have the mentality of a small side, when compared with Real Madrid (whom Robinho was comparing them with), and they haven’t won anything in ages.
Robinho went on to say how much he wanted to inspire a winning mentality in his new team. Again, fair enough.
But, via the miracle of modern tabloid journalism, this quote was spun around and dressed up into the following story, courtesy of The Sun:
“ROBINHO has slammed his Manchester City team-mates as a bunch of losers.”
Er, don’t want to be pedantic, but no he didn’t. Only in the most literal sense did the Brazilian imply that City were not winners (which is a very different thing from being losers), but The Sun’s take is about as far from what he meant as you can get.
Small wonder Premier League stars don’t like talking to the media.
Posted: 2nd, December 2008 | In: Sports Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
