adminModern footballers are used to abuse. Every time they post on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram there is always a steady stream of abuse and bizarre, offensive comments that come their way; very few manage to totally avoid the trolls that taint their attempts to connect with the fans outside of traditional media.
Not many have attracted as much scorn of late as Cesc Fàbregas.
The Chelsea midfielder has spent the past year in the worst form of his life, struggling desperately to regain some of the title-defining creativity that made his transfer to Stamford Bridge for around £30 million (fee via BBC Sport) look like the bargain of the (early) season.
With that form has come some due criticism and the rumours that Fàbregas was one of the players responsible for Mourinho’s exit from the west London club resulted in his tribute to the Portuguese manager on social media getting some of the worst abuse ever seen for a footballer and Cesc was himself widely booed by home fans when his name was announced before Saturday’s crunch game with Sunderland, as well as when he was substituted.
The revelation from The Telegraph that the former Barcelona and Arsenal graduate was actually one of Mourinho’s closest allies and kept in close personal contact with the manager before and after his sacking is an eye-opener and unlikely to be false.
So why was everyone following Chelsea’s crisis convinced that it was Arsenal’s former captain that was creating a stir?
How has such an elegant creative midfielder, with a highlight reel that could make Juan Roman Riquelme drool, become such a hated figure in modern football?
This is the story of Cesc Fàbregas — the most misunderstood footballer in the world.
Arriving at Arsenal from La Masia as a youth prospect, his slight frame and possession-focused approach meant he was initially deployed as a central midfielder, making his debut at the age of 16 alongside the cultured Edu in the League Cup against Rotherham.
Fàbregas went on to make 303 appearances for the club before his 24th birthday.
During his time at the club, there were slight, but notable, controversies. Allegedly, a 17-year-old Cesc Fabregas was the man who threw the crucial, catalytic slice of deep pan pizza at Sir Alex Ferguson in the legendary 2004 “Battle of the Buffet”.
Ferguson mentions the incident in his autobiography but admits he never found out who threw the slice at him, despite the rumours.
One man who subscribed to the arguably irrational hate of the Catalan is Frank Lampard, who enjoyed several excellent battles with the Spaniard in the mid-noughties when the Wenger-Mourinho acrimony was starting to really fester.
During the “Snarling Cup Final” in 2007, Fàbregas and Lampard wasted no time trying to separate everyone involved in a mass injury-time brawl but in turn ended up in a brilliantly pathetic scuffle themselves.
Andy Gray was first in line to blame the Arsenal midfielder for the whole tussle, even though Touré and Adebayor were the clear protagonists.
Another incident, which incensed then Hull City manager Phil Brown, was Fàbregas celebrating Arsenal’s FA Cup quarter-final win in 2009 on the Tigers’ pitch in rather casual attire.
Brown alleged the Spaniard had spat near him intentionally but the FA decided there wasn’t any evidence to back up the claim and the Englishman’s question of “why was he dressed on the pitch in that manner?” followed by a swift sweeping of the incident under the carpet suggests that maybe Hull City realised that “spitting near someone” is tricky to prove and easy to misinterpret, let alone actually a monstrous crime.
Cesc Fàbregas is one of those footballers that quiz questions are built around. World Cup, European Championship, La Liga, Premier League, FA Cup and many other winners’ medals sit on his mantelpiece.
For a player 18 months away from his 30th birthday, by any stretch of the imagination he has had an extraordinary career.
Consider his contribution during this time. Fàbregas averages a goal or assist every 146 minutes, scoring or assisting 279 goals in 520 appearances including a World Cup winning assist for Andrés Iniesta and the crucial opening assist for Spain’s demolition of Italy in the Euro 2012 final.
Fàbregas has amassed an astonishing 101 caps for Spain during an era in which Xavi, Iniesta, Busquets, Xabi Alonso, David Silva, Juan Mata and Santi Cazorla have all been at their peak. He is ninth on the all-time list of most capped players for Spain, above Carles Puyol, David Villa and Fernando Hierro.
When Fàbregas won the Golden Boy Award in 2006, he had already helped drag Arsenal to a Champions League final, won an FA Cup and made over 100 senior appearances for one of Europe’s elite sides. Players of this calibre are normally revered, especially ones as graceful as the former La Masia starlet.
The argument that Fàbregas is a luxury player doesn’t hold weight when you consider he was regularly playing alongside Denilson, Diaby and other forgettable Arsenal midfielders during the club’s rebuilding.
Whichever way you look at it, it is hard to argue Fàbregas has been anything but a world class midfielder since 2006.
Throughout his career, Fàbregas has suffered from what can only be called “positional flexibility”.
Fàbregas, trained as a defensive midfielder, was always well-suited to a role further up the pitch. Prolific at youth level for Barcelona and Spain, he slowly began to inch towards the goal for Arsène Wenger’s side and during his brief spell as captain was most effective when deployed as a second striker behind Robin van Persie or Emmanuel Adebayor.
His career has come to be defined by the goals and assists he provides in tandem with his excellent passing and positional sense.
Arsenal fans loved their jewel in the crown but his inevitable move back to Barcelona hung like a bad smell around every single one of his game-winning contributions.
Reports surfaced every transfer window with rumours suggesting he was leaving. Barcelona stalwarts made embarrassingly candid admissions of the club’s desire to bring Cesc home.
At Barcelona, he was welcomed to enormous fanfare. Here was one of the best mid-fielders in the world coming home, back where he belonged; stronger, fitter and mentally tough thanks to his years of finishing school in the Premier League.
Fàbregas was seen as the heir-apparent to the ageing Xavi Hernández, arguably the greatest midfielder of his generation.
But something strange happened, Fàbregas didn’t want to replace Xavi, even telling RAC (via Goal) as much:
“I don’t see myself replacing Xavi. Xavi is unique.
“No matter how hard we look, Xavi is a one and only. Whoever replaces him (in the starting XI) will have to be very strong mentally and the team and the fans will have to get used to playing differently.”
Fàbregas was often deployed in the three-man midfield but didn’t have the snap in his passing or the tiki-taka obsession which fuelled the Catalan engine. Fàbregas’ evident knack for getting into goalscoring positions saw him played higher up the field, even as a false nine on occasion.
Fans grew weary of Fàbregas not fitting into the system at Camp Nou, seeing him as slow and ponderous, regarding him a player almost tainted by his foreign escapade. During his last appearance for Barcelona, Fàbregas was roundly booed in a 2-1 win. This, for a home-grown player who amassed 42 goals and 36 assists in 142 appearances — from midfield.
A move was inevitable and a return to Arsenal was long-mooted before the somewhat surprising announcement that Mourinho had charmed his way to the midfielder’s heart, sending Arsenal fans into a rage they have never woken up from, despite confirmation that Fàbregas was open to a move but Wenger chose not to re-sign his former captain.
At Chelsea, Fàbregas was asked to adapt once more, deployed by José Mourinho as a deep-lying play-maker alongside the behemoth that is Nemanja Mati. The two instantly clicked behind the Blues’ hard-working forward line and Cesc was allowed to drift at will and notched up a colossal 13 assists before January.
When Chelsea’s attacking magic wore off, Fàbregas was exposed in the two-man midfield that defined his glorious return to the Premier League.
His quite spectacular lack of pace and the 39 000 minutes on his career clock brutally exposed by managers who had been paying attention during the first half of the 2014 /15 campaign.
This season, Mourinho persisted with his £30 million man in a two-man midfield and the theme continued. Fàbregas is a willing runner, just not a very good one.
His performances plummeted along with his confidence and Chelsea fans turned on him — the midfielder who didn’t want to put a shift in, who was creating a rift in the dressing room and hated Mourinho. There was never a shred of evidence to back any of this.
Ultimately, it comes down to perceptions of a player who has attracted the deep disdain of fans from every club he has played for. In terms of his first Premier League spell, it’s not unfathomable to suggest that Fàbregas was the victim of naive coverage focussing far too much on nationality.
England and the English game was being changed before our very eyes by foreign players who were technically immaculate but didn’t approach the game with the blood, thunder and honesty viewers were used to.
If mid-noughties Arsenal embodied these perceptions, with their technique-focussed pontificating French manager, easily felled flair players and complete refusal to bow down to the establishment, Cesc Fàbregas embodied them all. — squawka.com
Online Reporter