Comment: Manchester City's Kaka Defeat Is Football's Victory

€100 million for a single player. €15 million per year as salary. After tax.  

Those were the figures that were being touted so shamelessly in the market.

€100 million. Enough to revamp an entire squad, buy three or four truly world class players and start ushering in a new era. And win trophies.

€15 million per year. After tax. Enough to buy a few more Audis, one or two Porsches, purchase a villa or maybe a plot in some remote island.

The Temptation And The Resistance

Tempting, very, very tempting. And you cannot honestly blame AC Milan for initially jumping up at the idea of selling their most prized asset for an amount that sincerely no one else in the world can afford.

And for a moment, Milan supremo Silvio Berlusconi and his right hand man Adriano Galliani were well on their way to sealing the deal. The forbidden apple was as close as their teeth and they were right on the verge of taking a bite when a Gautama Buddha-esque enlightenment followed.  

So the apple was thrown to the bin and so were the transfer papers. Berlusconi banged the desk and signed off his speech by politely telling Manchester City officials that the deal was over.

He went to the media acting as the Saviour, Kaka too followed him and explained how he had for "not even for thirty seconds" thought about leaving as he "never wanted money or anything" and the Milan supporters went crazy with joy as if they had signed a new player, which they hadn't, or as if their Messiah has returned when in fact he was always there in Milan.

Done. Dusted. Shelved. .

End Of Story?

No. It is not the end as you do get a weird suspicion that this will linger on for some more time to come, most probably not in the way that the Manchester United-Cristiano Ronaldo-Real Madrid transfer farce is dragging into its second (or third?) year now.

Manchester City, for all the rumours linking them with all the best footballers in the world, have not played ugly so far. There have been persistent rumours but they haven't been criminally naughty and gone on tapping players behind the clubs' back.

But as usual after a high profile deal falling through, the mud throwing is gathering momentum. Milan supremo Silvio Berlusconi vibrantly declares that Kaka was not going to Manchester and it was he who had called off the deal. Man City though state that it was them who withdrew their offer after talks with Milan stumbled onto a dead end.

What went on inside that room no one really knows and perhaps never will but at the end of the day, the truth is that neither Milan nor Kaka have fallen for the seductive pill called money that lures honour and loyalty to the abyss like Pied Piper leading the rats to the river.

More The Sinner Than The Saint

Not that Kaka or Milan were not tempted. If Kaka, with due respect for all that he symbolizes-and he symbolizes a lot from abstaining from sex until marriage to crediting Jesus for whatever he has got in life-if indeed he had not thought of leaving Milan for more than thirty seconds, then why would his father and agent Bosco Leite fly from all the way over to Milan and negotiate with the Premier League club?

But perhaps, the guiltiest of all was Berlusconi who even had the audacity to contemplate selling the player. After all, if he had straightaway turned out Man City from the gate, they wouldn’t have found them in the living room.

But for once, the truth that money can buy many things but not everything prevailed. In the end, both Milan and Kaka rejected the offer and let us remind ourselves that it was an offer of €100 million according to most reports and €251 million according to The Sun.

But willingly or unwillingly but certainly wittingly Milan revealed that you can indeed purge football of the absurd machinations of monetary transactions. Manchester City's history comes nowhere near Milan's but their financial power, apparently, is enough, if we may allow a slight exaggeration, to buy a small country.

Man City are lavished with money and lots of money. So much so that one gets the feeling that they can buy any player from any club in the world.

The Moral Victory

But Milan's and Kaka's snub on Monday exhibits that possessing money is one thing, gaining respect and honour is quite another. If Kaka were indeed convinced to join Manchester City, then it would have symbolized the arrival of a true dawn at the City of Manchester Stadium, as possessing a player of Kaka's class and personality, would have imported a sense of serious prestige.

But now Kaka, whose arrival would perhaps have smashed the window and convinced other world-class players to march in, has snubbed Man City. So doesn't this imply a smack in the face of Man City, who with all their lofty plans and wealth, have fallen on their faces, although with dignity?

If Manchester City had signed Kaka, then the biggest losers would have been the earnest Milan supporters who have been doing their own nutters-sending mails, protesting in the city, threatening Berlusconi-to see that the move fails.

And now that the move has indeed failed, Man City are the biggest losers as they should have now realized that all those bags of cash would not tempt the best bunch to shun their own.

And who is the biggest winner? Football of course.

Subhankar Mondal