Soundoff: We’re Giving You A Blank Check

By: chris | February 13th, 2009

We’ve just been bought out by Dubai. Or Bill Gates. Or the United States government just stimulated us. And we’re buying a football team. Something in a nice, sunny location where we can spend our days working. And by working we mean sipping iced beverages with our toes dug deep into the warm sand.

Starting off we’ve been told we can buy any player in the world to build the team around, and we’ve been given a blank check. However, there are three players who are absolutely, undeniably not for sale.

Those three? Can you guess? Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo and Kaka. Mainly because this would be a pointless exercise, but also because the first draft was a €100m check and we quickly realized, “oh, that might not be enough”. And though we’re rich now, we’re also financially prudent, and six figures is just ridiculous for one player. So there.

My selection is quite easy: David Villa, as he’d actually be my number two right behind Lionel Messi were this open to everyone (Kaka can blow hot and cold and CR’s just a muppet.)

Simple answer? Goals don’t grow on trees. Unless you’re in David Villa’s backyard.

Longer answer? He’s the most complete striker in the world. He can outpace the defense to a ball over the top, he can link with the midfield, he can beat his man – any man, it doesn’t even have to be Phil Jagielka* – one on one, he can just as easily serve his teammates with a silver platter pass as he can coolly slotting one in at the back post himself, he can strike a killer dead ball, his intelligent off the ball movement is enough to make grown men cry and he can make the impossible possible. He’s an assassin, pure and simple, guaranteed to give you twenty goals a season and he’s only now entering his prime.

Plus, he lives a quiet family life and shies away from the spotlight, which would go over incredibly well with our legal team, who we aim to please on a regular basis. (Mostly because displeasing them really displeases us eventually.)

* – Incidentally this was discussed days before David turned Phil into a bout of vertigo.

And he’s got a highlight reel with perhaps the most appropriate soundtrack ever:

And of course the very next move I’d make would be to start building from the back, but even if I stuck ten men behind the ball I’d feel reasonably assured those 1-0 victories would keep on rolling – somehow.

Now, if you were our sporting director, who would be your very first buy? Who would you build your team around?