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| Tuesday, 31 August 2010 01:33 |
Hleb says no to Benfica?Lisbon club yet to land Barcelona man Benfica may have lost the race in trying to lure FC Barcelona midfielder Alayksander Hleb to the Estadio da Luz as the Belarussian has allegedly decided to move to the English Premier League.
Reports had surfaced in Portugal and Spain that the former Arsenal player rebuffed the overtures from the Portuguese club and preferred to return to the English game, namely with Birmingham City. For the past few days it appeared that the Aguias were in pole position to secure the 29-year-old on loan for the upcoming season, but failure to agree terms with Hleb himself appear to have ruptured the entire negotiation process between the two parties. Despite the many proclamations made by the Iberian press, no official word has been issued by either Barcelona or Birmingham that a deal has been reached, leading to the idea that Benfica may still be in the mix for the ex-Stuttgart man. All will be known by the end of the day today as the transfer window comes to a close and will not re-open untul January 2011. by Marco Pereira |
NN boys ate morrer
Some smaller games are not as exciting in our Liga but Porto, Sporting, and Braga offer sold out games plus Benfica always brings in the highest numbers for all the smaller clubs.
As for him getting good exposure, I think Di Maria, Luiz, and Coentrão have gained more exposure then this guy will ever have at Birmingham. Hell I can’t name one player from Birmingham and I watch the EPL. Given his age he will likely be bought out by some mid-table team at best and enjoy the rest of his years without winning titles. I’m happy with him not joining Benfica since he seems to have no real intentions of doing anything big at this point in his career.
Why join a team like Benfica just for 6 CL group games? Maybe 2 more in the 2nd round if your lucky but thats it. The league games will be against mickey mouse teams in front of mainly empty stadiums.
Meanwhile at Birmingham ok he won't play in Europe but will get to play in front of packed stadiums every week with fans that will idolise him and go to places like Chelsea, Arsenal, Man U, Liverpool. If he has a good season he could attract an offer from a bigger club - after all this is just a loan deal and he is still technically a Barcelona player.
If he had a great season at Benfica nobody would really care because he's playing in a weaker league and their CL group isn't exactly against top class opponents either.
Play CL? He played it lot of times (at least one final included) and last year played it with Sttutgart, a team with same aspirations as Benfica on CL (reaching the knocking out stage) so I can easily understand that he can achieve more plazer playing on a well supported club on Premier League than a club with a lot of pressure by the fans and press (and why not government?), that plays CL 4 - 4 years and belongs to an "unknown" league.
But...
attention, Birmingham dresses in blue. PdC bribing!!! ;)
If this can make feel better the benfiquista huge ego, I can say that last year Hleb rejected a loan offer by Inter included on Eto'o - Ibrahimovic change. He prefered Sttutgart. We all know how finish this story and who was european champion.
At the end of the day most players would choose playing in EL or CL over the EPL. It seems like he's looking for a good paycheque where the expectation is not to get kicked out of the league and he doesn't have to work hard (less games). Its a lazy way of finishing your career and I'm glad he's not coming to Benfica with that work ethic.
As for Torpiano, ofcoarse there can be many factors, it could even be that he would rather live in england more than portugal.
Unless he considers himself close to retiring and just wants to make as much money as possible the move makes no sense.
Benfica are in the CL, a team who will win more games than they will lose (atleast you would think so), seems like a better idea to me.
simple as that
Given the choice of playing for a big club in a small league or a smaller club in the best league in the world I think you'll find most players will choose the latter, as I would if I was in his position.
He's already played in England and he probably misses playing here in front of full stadiums every week.