At risk of being called a posh scumbag, I’ll attempt to summarise, in good grammar, the facts and speculation (having read every post up to page 160) from the Yaya Toure debacle. I’ll also be providing my two cents, and I welcome comments and criticism, but I’d appreciate if they’re kept clean. As you’ll notice from my post count, I’m also more of a reader than a poster but decided to type this for ease of those joining the thread late.
Four tweets were posted on Yaya’s official twitter account. Despite the difference in puncutation styles, their contents do not matter as we don’t know who posted which tweet. It could have been the player, his agent, or a social media representative, whether hired by the player or by MCFC.
In legal terms, as it’s an official account, the account holder is responsible for everything tweeted (e.g. if there was a racist/hate tweet, Yaya would be held criminally accountable) unless proof is obtained (e.g. through MAC and IP addresses) that someone else was responsible. Since this isn’t as serious, the question of Yaya having to come out and deny the tweets is a matter of personal choice. Of course we’d all want him to do so, but we don’t know as yet what his position is.
Additionally, there is debate over whether he actually knows this whole fiasco is going on. Some fans say it’s impossible in this day and age, but given he’s not in the UK and probably a few hours ahead in terms of time zones, he’s probably asleep when the whole thing began to grow out of proportion. How many footballers follow the news or are in touch with their agents 24/7?
Regardless of whether Yaya’s agent has gone rogue, we also don’t know the contractual agreements between the two parties. Some are speculating that the man isn’t a licensed agent, while others feel that he is paid to represent 100% of the player’s thoughts and feelings. On one hand, he has helped Yaya to pocket salaries with which I could live on for 100 generations; on the other, this man means so much that Yaya’s son was named after him.
Said agent has supposedly (how would we know if this farce turns out to be caused by an imposter and the media are left with their flies open) been on Sky Sports News and Talksport. His rant in poor English basically claims that Yaya has been unhappy due to what he perceived as the club’s lack of attention towards him, primarily little things like birthday greetings, congratulations, and handshakes. He used journalism’s version of parking the bus by not giving direct answers, denying all financial-related accusations, and constantly beating his own drum to get his point across. Personally, I wouldn’t take his words even with a pint of salt.
There is also debate over the role of MCFC’s Media/PR department in cases like this. Allow me to digress: When the Malaysian Airlines flight went missing, the authorities were slow in providing updates, but ensured that all information was accurate. They were accused of inefficiency, as well as of trying to spin tales and having something to hide. On the other hand, in the South Korean ship tragedy, the authorities wanted to publicise “facts” to the media ASAP, and ended up revising their passenger count at least 5 times. It goes without saying that they were heavily lambasted.
Journalism is a trade which employs various morals, as evident from the use of phrases such as “Daily Mail readers”. Therefore, if the club’s stance is to keep silent and wait for progress towards concrete facts (which IMO is the choice of highest integrity and credibility), then it isn’t right for us to criticise. Even though the club is in a position to find out the truth, they might still be as clueless as us – after all, it’s been less than a day. Besides, even when they uncover everything, for business reasons (e.g. transfer dealings), they may not want to make any announcements at all.
There was also debate over whether Yaya, as a Muslim, celebrates birthdays. Again, we don’t know how devout he is, and this is a personal matter over which we should not try to fabricate stories. My understanding is that the reason behind Islam discouraging birthday celebrations is due to values such as being frugal, rather than the act of celebrating itself.
Part 2 to come after reading pages 161-175…
