I laughed last week when I read that Sevco’s Colombian striker might still leave Ibrox in this window.
I laughed because all of us threw away our Morelos Bingo cards when the window shut. Those who had teams from Dubai and the UAE must be kicking themselves.
The week passed without Morelos’ future being any clearer. Wasn’t it supposed to have been tied up by now? Didn’t he promise that? Much of the juice in this story comes from a comment he was meant to have to the media in his home country, that his future would “be resolved soon”.
Today I read a report that he and his agents are clamouring for a new contract.
This could all just be lost in translation, of course.
There’s a great story about Carl Bernstein whilst he was working on Watergate.
Early in the investigation he had become obsessed by an $89,000 check which had been paid to the Republican Party and then routed through Mexico to wind up in the notorious dirty tricks slush fund.
Bernstein would spend ages on the phone, trying to speak to people in Mexico in their native Spanish; he didn’t know more than a few words of the language. He was so bad at it that whenever he would start making those calls someone would inform the rest of the newsroom about it and they would all crowd around his desk to snigger at his efforts.
The in-house joke at The Washington Post was that Bernstein’s sources had spilled the whole Watergate story to him … he just hadn’t understood them.
So maybe that’s it.
Maybe Morelos’ future has been decided already and our hacks just don’t have a clue because their sources don’t speak English. Or it could just be that they have no sources and are inventing stuff. Let’s face it, we know these people well enough to know that they aren’t doing their own Bernstein style investigating.
They wouldn’t know how for starters, and most of them are heart lazy.
Frankly, if they didn’t have Spanish speaking websites and Google Translate they would be hard pressed to come up with anything on Morelos at all.
Here’s what’s definitely been lost in translation; the words many at the club are doubtless saying into the ears of Morelos and his agent; “there haven’t been any actual bids.”
Once again, the player has ended with stories that there was massive interest in his signature ringing in his ears, and being told that the club itself is standing in his way of leaving.
The club itself was responsible for many of the stories that linked him to moves elsewhere; we know this to be a fact. They were so desperate to ship him out in the window that they didn’t particularly care that he and his agent might believe that there was some truth in it all.
I think the new contract demand is probably accurate.
This isn’t the first time he and his agent have leveraged alleged interest into a bigger salary.
Whether Morelos himself is convinced by the stories or not, I feel fairly sure his agent recognises them as pure bunk – nothing has been “lost in translation” there, he gets it alright – but at the same time, he won’t let the opportunity go begging.
He would be a very poor agent if he did, and this guy has already played Sevco like a fiddle.
What’s one more shot at it?
On top of that, if he’s really on his game he will almost certainly try to engineer a release clause in the deal; whatever they might be telling people outside of Ibrox, they would have taken any sum which ran into eight figures. If he demands it, I think he’ll get it.
This is looking like it will be another major mishandling of this by Sevco. The story about interest from the Arabian Peninsula is one last effort to drum up interest in the player, from one of the only places left where the transfer window is still open.
His agent has been presented with an open goal and is shooting into it.
The press says Sevco holds all the cards because he still has three years left on his deal; they will have to punt him long before that, and they know it. They also know the manager can’t stand him and that he can’t stand the manager. They need to end this as quickly as they can.
I think his agent will get his new deal, and the sell-on clause for a realistic sum.
Perhaps when Morelos talked about this all being resolved this week that’s what he meant.
One thing is for sure, there is no scenario where he pretends nothing is wrong here.
There’s way too much animosity in their situation for that.
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