van Persie Out Injured; In Other News, I HATE International Friendlies

By: Martin | November 14th, 2009

Most of you have probably already seen this, but Robin van Persie tore an ankle ligament today, an injury which will keep him out for an estimated 2-3 months.

In what, you may ask, super-important match was he playing in to take on such an injury? Was it the World Cup? Nope. The European championships? Nope. A qualifier for one of those tournaments? Nope. It was a friendly. A completely stupid, meaningless friendly. It’s so good to know that our chances of winning the league took just took a significant hit so Holland could draw 0-0 with Italy a full 8 months before their next significant match.

I don’t really know what to say. I’m just really, really, really angry. But anger won’t actually do any good. I’ll just say that at some point the clubs are going to have to actually make a stand–they’ll never be able to absolutely stop players from playing for their countries (and I’m not suggesting that they should), but it seems perfectly reasonable that a club would have legitimate objections to its players playing in a completely meaningless match at this point in the season. It would be nice if more countries were like Mexico (NOTE: that’s the first time I have ever started a sentence with that clause), who didn’t schedule matches for this international break because it didn’t see the need to interfere with its players club obligations. Most international federations won’t do this, if for no other reason than they want the revenue. Well, Dutch football federation, I hope the money was worth it. But to them, of course it is–they’re not the ones that are going to have to pay van Persie’s wages and cover the cost of his medical care and rehabilitation for the next 2-3 months, so what do they care. And therein lies the problem. But you’ve heard me make this argument dozens of times already, so I won’t repeat myself any more than I already have.

Sigh. Arsene Wenger said it better than I ever could:

Gerard Houllier’s thoughts on the matter [international football] echo mine. He thinks that what the national coaches are doing is like taking the car from his garage without even asking permission. They will then use the car for ten days and abandon it in a field without any petrol left in the tank. We then have to recover it, but it is broken down. Then a month later they will come to take your car again, and for good measure you’re expected to be nice about it.

I know I’m probably just impulsively speaking out of anger, but you know what? I’m tired of being nice about it–at some point we need to think about getting a lock for the garage.