Today, The Daily Record is screaming its own lunacy from the headlines yet again with the story about how Hagi is “worth £100 million.”
Have you ever read such hysterical nonsense in your life?
Today, at his presser, Gerrard told fans not to put too much pressure on the player, and then the paper comes out with this? I’ve long maintained that in trying to talk up that club’s every move the press has more often than not screwed them up.
Besides, the ship has already sailed. It sailed when Gerrard himself sat in front of the hacks when the player signed and called him “one of the best Under 21 prospects in Europe.” That was ridiculous, and so has the over-reaction that greeted his goal at the weekend.
Hagi has flopped at every club but the one in Romania which his father owns.
His time at Genk lasted half a season; the club is willing to take a loss on him just to get him off the wage bill. And people have talked such trash about the club itself that they were forced to respond the other day, and their verdict on the player is anything but good.
“It is true that Ianis Hagi did not immediately fulfil the creative role we wanted from him,” their technical director said. “
Of course we wanted it to be different and we want to stress it was not the fault of the player alone … He struggled with us and sometimes had to settle for a place in the stand rather than the pitch … there was not enough sporting evidence that he deserved more minutes with us,” he said.
That is venomous.
Is isn’t the verdict you’d expect delivered on who, if he was sold for that fee, would comfortably put him in the top ten global transfers in history.
That newspaper never gets tired of embarrassing itself like this. It never gets tired of wallowing in its own humiliation.
These kind of stories are risible, and it doesn’t it matter that the actual valuation isn’t the paper’s but belongs to the owner of Steaua Bucharest … who it should be noted didn’t try to sign the player in spite of this ridiculous figure.
It’s The Record’s embrace of this obvious garbage that astounds you.
It is pandering, of course it is. It is pandering to an idiot audience. But you get the impression at times that there are people on their writing staff who need this stuff too, people who need to cling to hope no matter how false, no matter how barmy, no matter how overblown or illogical.
You could almost feel sorry for them, if the contempt wasn’t so strong.
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