After taking a quick look through the soccer news on Monday, I would very much like to unplug my internet, throw my phone into a river, and live out the rest of my days in a cave.
Soccer is very good at making me want to log off forever
Between the Mesut Ozil/Arsenal/China controversy and Serie A’s racist monkey paintings, maybe we should ignore soccer for a while.
First up, Mesut Özil has been officially cancelled in China after criticizing the Chinese government on Instagram for its treatment of Uighur Muslims. Arsenal, having learned from the Houston Rockets debacle that this was going to mess with their money, put out a cowardly statement in response.
“Regarding the comments made by Mesut Özil on social media, Arsenal must make a clear statement. The content published is Özil’s personal opinion. As a football club, Arsenal has always adhered to the principle of not involving itself in politics.”
Predictably, it didn’t matter. Arsenal’s match against Manchester City got pulled from Chinese television anyway and they’re being inundated with demands to fire Özil, which would cost them about £60 million. If they don’t get rid of him, they might lose more than that in lost business. They gained absolutely nothing from throwing their player under the bus and showed their ass at the same time.
That story is somehow less stupid than the one that came out of Serie A, who have decided to fight racism by paying an artist a lot of money to do monkey paintings. The idea is that racists will stop calling black people monkeys if they can see that we are all monkeys, I guess?
Anyway, the lesson here is never assume anyone who runs a big company is smarter than you. If you want to be the CEO of Arsenal FC or Serie A, I promise that you are smart enough to do it.
I’m going to go take a two-week nap now.
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