october 7th
Still lots of stuff going on this week. Now we have the ‘Spanish coach in Henry race row‘ headlines. The stories, as we’re seeing them and which originated in the French press, say that Luis Aragones said to José Reyes “Tell the n****r (Henry) you are better than him. Tell him from me”.
What he said in Spanish was “Dígale al negro que usted es mejor. Dígaselo de mi parte.”
Now you don’t need to be a cunning linguist to know that the Spanish word for black is ‘negro’, but the Spanish have other words they use to talk about black people in an offensive way.
Of course you can ask the question why he didn’t just use Henry’s name. In Marca Aragones says he doesn’t understand the reaction to his words, emphasising that he’s not a racist and he didn’t want to insult anybody.
Update: The Spanish press are now reporting that what he said was ”¡Me cago en su puta madre negro de mierda!’. Which really is not a nice thing to say in Spanish – rough translation means ‘I shit on his whore of a mother the black shit’.
Edu spoke to El Mundo Deportivo yesterday. Here’s some of what he had to say.
- “I respect Arsenal and I won’t say I would like to play for Barcelona because tomorrow all the papers will report on this, it’s happened to me before.”
- “What’s attractive about Barcelona is not just the club, there’s the city, the climate….lots of things.”
- “I am an Arsenal player and I have a contract although from January I can negotiate my future freely if we don’t agree to renew.”
- Speaking about a possible move in the transfer window he said “First they must come to an agreement between themselves (Arsenal and Barcelona), until then I can wait.”
Barcelona have lost 3 midfielders with serious knee injuries in the last couple of weeks. Thiaggo Motta, Edmilson (who’s been playing central midfield) and Gabri are all out for at least 6 months and Barça’s squad is threadbare. They need somebody and although Edu won’t be able to play in the Champions League he seems to fit the bill. Good job he didn’t say he wanted to play for them though, we might have come away with the wrong impression entirely.
Today is the AGM at Arsenal. With any luck Arseblog will have a representative there and it’s bound to be a jolly, festive occasion after the last few days. All things going well we should have a report for Friday morning. Today is also the last day to get your entries in for the cool Highly Fabregas t-shirts – thanks to our chums at goalhanger.com for the prizes. See Tuesday’s blog entry for the question and email address to send to. Winners will be announced tomorrow.
Football tonight. I’m going to score a hat-trick, so I am.
