A disturbing shadow -and increasingly encompassing- looms over sports journalism: paid stories, journalists on payroll, not from a medium but from clubs, representatives, companies. It is becoming more common. Topics imposed by exclusive media coverage, come out of nowhere and expand on social networks creating trends, enlarging figures, creating opinion. And they achieve their objective, generally economic: place a player in another club for a fortune, renew a contract on the rise, validate television contracts, achieve millions of followers in Instagram or Twittersomething that monetizes very well, signing as a model for a clothing company or another item.
In the Spanish media it is so common that it borders on shamelessness. There are complete means on the payroll of external agents. Real campaigns are mounted in favor of a player worth a million and they end up selling him for forty. In general, campaigns launched by soccer players’ entrepreneurs and even by club leaders in search of some interest.
Nobody hallucinates with Coutinho
“Munich hallucinates with Coutinho”, headlined a Catalan newspaper in 2019, when the Brazilian was on loan at Bayern. Obviously, nobody hallucinates with Coutinho. It happens that FC Barcelona, in one of its usual ruinous (or rare) signings, had taken it from Liverpool, paying 170 million euros with bonuses included. A price inflated to the point of indecency, that perhaps no one would have risked for Pelé, Maradona or Messi. But Barsa boasted of getting a superstar. Cou was a fiasco in Catalonia, he irritated the public at the Camp Nou and the board that hired him was too exposed with such a low level of the player.
They asked his handler to try to place him somewhere at any cost. they got him the bayern, two years on loan and to take care of his very high salary. And also, a purchase option for 120 million. So you had to make noise and say that in Germany people didn’t even eat to see Coutinho. But Bayern did not bite and returned it. Finally, the Brazilian went to Aston Villa for 20 million, an eighth of what they had spent. They bought it as a Ferrari and sold it as a Fiat 600. And he returned to England because of the hand given to him by Steven Gerrard, his former partner in Liverpool. Gerrard is the coach of the “Vila”.
As usually happens with Cou, the gaseous effect returned to him, he rose like foam in the first five games and then fell to limits that forced Gerrard himself to send him to the bench. Coutinho he was fine at Liverpool and is now a wandering soul, but he fully secured the future of three generations with an eight-figure deal. The press machinery worked.
Prior to his very sure move to Real Madrid, Kylian Mbappé was for the Madrid media virtually a mix of Pele with Zidane and Batistuta. And an exemplary son and athlete. There were several daily notes praising his soccer and personal virtues. But the unexpected happened, the unusual: he left Madrid with the bouquet of flowers waiting in the corner and continued in the arms of Paris Saint Germain. He renewed for three years with the Qatari owners. From there he became a bad word in the Spanish capital and surroundings. Now, the related press only refers to his stratospheric ego, to the almost obscene contract they made to him, to his possible romance with a transsexual model, his streaking with Neymar and other cuties. He is no longer the humble boy about to sign with Madrid. Now it is Judas. Florentino Pérez’s skin must be defended, for whom the hiring failed.
When Cristiano Ronaldo he cuddles with the goal “he is the best athlete in history” according to certain friendly press, and there is talk of his benefits on the field, when he is crooked (or in frank decline) as since he left Madrid, he continues to appear in the same proportion on the billboard, although for frivolities: because he premiered his new yacht, for his collection of luxury cars, his vacations with the beautiful and pulpy Georgina or his 30-room mansion. There is no mention of football, but of Cristiano, who has Gestifute, the company behind jorge mendeswith a dozen experts in marketing, communications and social networks.
“The scorer, when he gets old, has to decide between precision or speed, the two things cannot be together, that’s what happens to Cristiano,” Diego Torres wrote in El País, from Madrid. In Portugal, unaccustomed to any criticism of Ronaldo, he fell like a national offense.
the james case
James Rodriguez, also from the Mendes team, is possibly the footballer -or perhaps athlete- with more popularity and higher income depending on what he returns in the rectangle, with the ball. He has very long periods of inactivity – six months, five months – yet he is more active than anyone in the media. He has two to three daily news, either for a change of look, because he is always about to go to other clubs -in general false rumors-, for a meeting with another celebrity. He has already passed 50 million followers on networks (Pelé has 10 million). And he’s hot on his heels Mohamed Salah (52.9), Sergio Ramos (53.4), Zlatan Ibrahimovic (55.8), Karim Benzema (58.2). Having 50 million adherents monetizes to a high degree.
A photo of you with such a brand of beer in hand can earn you hundreds of thousands of dollars. There are no doubts, it is a construction, an image elaboration based on strafing with news. It doesn’t matter if she doesn’t play. Instead, his repeated injuries are a mystery. No one from the Mendes clan, nor James himself, reveals what the ailment is, why it breaks every time he plays a game. That is not talked about.
For all these operations, “close” journalists are needed, “from the stick”, who launch a story and then it is amplified. “Here in Ecuador there is a channel that owns the TV rights of the league and another that has the exclusivity of the selection. Sometimes there are horrendous matches from the local tournament, but they are talked about as if they are better than the Premier League. And for those who comment on the national team’s games, this is a mixture of Brazil from the ’70s and the Guardiola’s Barcelona. The testimony is from Ricardo Vasconcellos, sports editor of El Universo.
There are hundreds of other examples. Sponsored journalism damages the rigor of criticism, diverts attention, invents. And it gradually expands. He is insane and disrespectful to the public, although part of the public likes that run run. He gladly buys it.
last tango
JORGE BARRAZA
For the time
@JorgeBarraza OK
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