LEE PAYNE

Tag: argentina

  • Aston Villa!? Norwich City are taking a risk selling Emi Buendia

    On Saturday, the news broke that Emi Buendia would be sold by Norwich City.

    Less than a month after the end of the season, they were no longer rumours. My first reaction was disappointment. I was desperate for Norwich to keep their most creative player, believing him to be crucial to our hopes of staying in the Premier League.

    My second reaction was surprise at his destination. This brilliant, skillful, tenacious midfielder with most of his career still ahead of him. One of the best players Norwich have ever had, one who can make things happen and do things that other players just can’t. One who has just made it into the Argentina squad for the first time, surely to hang around for a long time to come. His new club? Aston Villa.

    I felt sure that, with Premier League football now on offer at Carrow Road, were Buendia to leave it would be to a club in a European competition. When Arsenal (who will not play in any of the three European competitions next season) were touted as his next club, I said he could do better than them – and I meant it.

    Buendia is rough around the edges, not the complete package by any means. He can win games on his own but if he’s having an off day he can quickly get frustrated. When that happens, he can be a bit of a passenger. Also, he tends to be so much better than his opponents that the only way they can stop him is by kicking him around the pitch. Occasionally, Buendia will react to this harsh treatment and more than once got himself sent off.

    The talent is undoubtedly there, however, and I am convinced he will reach the very top. Which is why I am rather surprised that he has chosen mid-table Villa, and their not exactly inspiring manager, as the next step in his career. Having said that, I wish him every success (apart from when he plays against us) and I am grateful for the three years we had him.

    From Norwich’s point of view, Buendia’s sale has come relatively early in the summer and the club have plenty of time to invest the transfer fee in new players to replace him. It’s a sizeable fee, too. City have an irritating policy of labelling all of their transfer dealings as ‘undisclosed’ fees, but Aston Villa are reportedly paying an initial £33m with another £5m potentially coming if certain, though unspecified, performance criteria are met. Should he move from Villa to the big club I expected him to in the first place, Norwich will benefit once again from a 10% sell-on fee.

    This makes the 24-year-old comfortably Norwich’s biggest sale. Until 2018, the club had never sold a player for £20m or more. They have since sold three – James Maddison to Leicester, Ben Godfrey to Everton and now Buendia. In an interview with the BBC last week, sporting director Stuart Webber said that if the club sold one of their top players the figure is ‘probably going to start with a number three in front of it’ and ‘we’re really relaxed on that front’. He has been true to his word.

    It is reassuring that this doesn’t appear to have come as a shock to the people in power at Carrow Road. While I was hoping they would stick their heels in, refuse to sell Buendia and build the team around him to take on the Premier League – like Villa did with Jack Grealish – the relaxed response from Webber suggests that new faces are already being lined up. I thought it would be worth our while spending a fair bit convincing Buendia to stay for just one more season, and that it would be much easier to replace Max Aarons if the club needed a big sale. For the size of the fee, we could potentially buy three players to replace the one we have sold. Speaking of Grealish, I imagine Villa must be expecting to sell him this summer now and have bought Buendia to take his place.

    I do think Norwich have taken a risk in selling their star man. Buendia created an incredible number of chances in the Premier League last time, considering he was in the side that finished bottom. It will be difficult to find someone with as much creativity in midfield as him. It’s hard for me not to believe that our chances of staying up next season have taken a hit. However, if we’ve learned one thing in the four years since Webber and Farke took over, it’s that they know what they are doing and to question their judgement often leaves you looking a fool.

  • My First World Cup

    This year, the World Cup will be more than welcome. Norwich City’s rebuilding job after Premier League relegation can be put to the back of minds for just a month and attentions can turn to the fun, excitement and drama in Brazil.

    This is probably not the first article of this type you have read. You probably know by now that every football fan has a particular World Cup that they consider to be their ‘first’ – not literally, but the first tournament to capture their imagination and the first to live on in their memories. For me, this accolade belongs to 2002.

    As the World Cup began in 2002 I was a few months short of my 10th birthday. With the tournament being held jointly between Japan and South Korea, the time differences meant that matches started early in the mornings here. Before breakfast time. My school must have been very generous because for England matches we were allowed to stay at home and watch before coming into school afterwards, and if your parents were not able to keep you at home for an extra hour or two then the match was played in the school hall on a delay. I can clearly remember heading into school after England had drawn 0-0 with Nigeria and giving a smug-looking smile to my fellow pupils who were having to sit through it not knowing the goalless outcome.

    In literal terms, of course, my first World Cup would have been USA ’94, but as I was not yet two years old I can say with some confidence that I remember nothing about it whatsoever. I was also a late developer in becoming a football fan. I grew up in a family of football fans but much preferred watching cartoons until I was about 8. I can remember laying on the living room floor watching England’s famous 5-1 win over Germany in September 2001 and being utterly inconsolable after Norwich lost the play-off final against Birmingham the following May.

    The 2002 World Cup did not go too badly for England in the grand scheme of things. David Beckham scored a penalty to beat Argentina which made up for his red card against them in 1998 (see video above) and we made it to the quarter finals before a fluke of a free kick from Ronaldinho went over David Seaman’s head and we went out 2-1 to Brazil. I can also remember The Sun, which my dad had delivered every Saturday, putting their cartoon character Hagar the Horrible on the front page as a preview to England playing Denmark. The Brazilians went on to win their 5th World Cup with a comfortable win over Germany in the final.

    To think that ‘my first World Cup’ is now 12 years ago was an eye-opener. 2002 was not a vintage World Cup, but it was my World Cup. As much as I am club before country when it comes to football, the World Cup is such a brilliant tournament that for four weeks every four years I indulge myself in it and revel all the colour and celebration that it has. Inside, it makes me feel warm to think that, to some young boy or girl out there, Brazil 2014 will be their first World Cup.

    Perhaps you will read all about it before the kick off in 2026.