I titled this post asylum instead of amnesty because of one of my favorite bars in Washington, DC: Asylum. Only at a sweet biker bar can you get 25 cent pints of Shiner Bock on Saturday afternoons. Simply stunning.
This story is a little old, but a resolution to the situation is going to come to a head next week. Weeks ago a player, Al Bangura, on Watford in the English Premier League (EPL) was told that his work permit was going to be revoked and he would subsequently be deported from England.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/africa/4880822.stm
There are all kinds of reasons for him to stay and really, this is exactly what amnesty is all about. This poor kid was brought to England at the age of 15. It wasn't through any doing of his own that he ended up in England It was the work of a creepy, anonymous Frenchman better suited for an episode of Dateline: How to Catch a Predator than as the guardian of a teenager. If anything, England owes this kid an apology for allowing the kind of atmosphere in which teenage boys are manipulated into a sex trade by its own citizens. Not only that, they would be sending him away to a country rent apart by civil strife, not to mention a tribe that commonly practices some forms of cannibalism. Yikes.
The problem does not lie with Al Bangura. The problem lies with the state of English football, or should I say the sorry state of English football. Fresh off the heels of failing to QUALIFY for Euro 2008 there have been calls from fans and officials alike to Anglocize the EPL. The successes of teams like Arsenal and Chelsea, both of which are filled to guts with foreign born players, have people nervous that the lack of opportunity for native sons essentially hurts the pride of Egland, its national team. It is this fear that has people, Sir Alex Ferguson of Manchester United among them, clamoring for a limit on foreign born players allowed to compete on each team. What a joke. Competition is so important in elevating the level of just about any product. The failure here lies in the development of its players at all levels.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/7137071.stm
Back to my point, there is no reason this kid should be punished for a small amount of xenophobia that is currently prevalant among some of the citizens. Eliminating the foreign player from the game isn't going to solve the problems of English football.
2 comments:
wow - poor kid. welcome back to the blogosphere at the holidays. was worried we'd lost you. you need to let peeps subscribe so we can be alerted without checking back daily :)
Tru dat. Also have to consider how much more popular the league is worldwide because it attracts top talent, no matter the nationality. I wouldn't care about EPL half as much as I do if it was only a bunch of slow english guys playing- having players like ronaldo, fabregas, drogba, friedel, etc. improves the quality fo the product dramatically
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