Avoiding the Drop

It’s no secret that I dislike ESPN. This is not uncommon amongst bloggers (I will NOT refer to us as the blogosphere) as there seems to be a rather large anti big-media contingent for a variety of reasons. My first dip into blogging was a piece over at Unprofessional Foul about how I didn’t want the EPL to get taken over by ESPN. Luckily FSC’s control over the packages has kept some of that from happening, but I still find their coverage irritating. That of the network that is, not the actual games (which I usually watch without sound, habit of years and years of Arabic streams). Nevermind that they bury Champions League highlights now that they lost the rights or that they don’t do gamecasts online for the qualifiers anymore (wonder why) but they still can’t get highlights right. They can pronounce Iguodala’s name flawlessly, but still can’t pronounce Aston Villa or Steven Gerrard. What does this have to do with what I’m writing today? Nothing, but I just woke up and wanted to bitch. No, my beef is with their website: Soccernet. And it isn’t with their general poor editing abilities – cannot tell how many times Xabi turned into Xavi, Ronaldinho listed as a defender, Mascherano a striker, and my god the broken links and misapplied pictures (I screw up too, but I’m not the “world’s site for the world’s game”) – but rather with one of their writers in general.

Harry Harris.

When eyebrows go rogue.

I hate this man. I’ve mentioned it in my articles in the past, and if the tone of “Harry Harris and his roving bandof idiots” isn’t enough to clue you in, well I’ll tell you why I hate him. Because he’s a bullshit artist. Now, so is every rumor writer in the business. You can find analysis of papers like The Mail which look at the accuracy of rumor pieces. But my problem with Harris is deeper than being just a rumor guy. I’ve got a damn list here people.

News/Facts vs. Rumors/Guessing

Each day I read the rumor and gossip columns. Because I’m a glutton for punishment and there isn’t always a lot of real stuff to read. But at least the good people at the BBC have the decency to label theirs the “transfer and gossip” section. They also point out when things are ridiculous (like whenever they link to one made by certain rumor blogs who are even worse than Harris). But take one of my favorite steaming loads he has shoveled onto the masses: Aguero signed for Chelsea this April for £40mil.  Yeah that didn’t happen.  But at least he and ESPN just presented it as a rumor.

Yeah. No, that isn’t news.  This is presented as something that has happened, this is not a hypothetical. This is incredible sloppy, and it’s also incredibly misleading.  I got into an argument with a certain Chelsea supporter at the time that there was no way this was true and getting excited about it would be foolish because it was going to go away. And what do you know? That was the last we heard of this gem.  No retraction, no explanation for how this deal fell through, nothing.  It has become a running joke in the comments on his articles but ESPN still literally calls him “the man in the know.”  Aguero wasn’t alone, as if Harris is to believed, Kun’s Argie compatriot Angel di Maria is now playing for Manchester City after the clubs agreed to a £40mil deal for the winger.  Oops again.  I do enjoy that he just has a template value for Argentine transfers though, anyone who has juked numbers in the past knows that variation is key, come on Harry this is babytown frolics.

Personally I’m waiting on Rafa to respond to the criticism from this week’s Juventus draw.  Oh wait Rafa didn’t goto Juventus.  Well at least ESPN didn’t run it as “news” that the deal was done …. damn.  Yes that Soccernet source in Turin really nailed this one eh Harry? Now in his defense, this one is based more on laziness.  See, Soccernet’s news cycle is shorter than the actual British media.  Soccernet doesn’t have newspaper writers that can write things late at night, when the working day is over, the news is over.  The “Rafa’s deal in Juve all but done” story was around before Harris came out with this, but he just had to go and add his own sources to make it sound like he was in on the ground floor.  Then that floor fell out and everyone involved looked like an idiot, but at least they were original idiots unlike ESPN who piggybacks onto other mongering sites.

Now I don’t begrudge ESPN for trying to get in on the rumor business, and this isn’t a practice that is stritctly down to them, but part of the reason it pisses me off so much is because it is ESPN.  This is the goto soccer news site for many American fans, and frankly I don’t think the casual fans know how to wade through the transfer bullshit.  I literally had no less than a dozen conversations with people this summer who took Torres stories as fact and told me he HAD signed for Chelsea because they read it on ESPN and in The Sun (good company you’re keeping boys).  ESPN has a rumor blog for the transfer window, On The Move, which served as a daily live blog of the transfer window and I enjoyed reading it.  But the authors made clear they were dealing in rumors. The ESPN editors do not give Harris that label, they let him call it news. To me, that is sloppy as hell.  The one thing I didn’t like about that blog was that they routinely used Harris to contradict other rumors and would puff up his level of first hand information.  Granted, sometimes, he is right ….

He’s in Bed with Kia Joorabchian

Pictured: Everything wrong about this sport.

Kia Joorabchian is a slimeball.  He’s an agent who doesn’t even have the decency to call himself an agent (which I’m sure is for legal reasons, he may be evil, but he’s brilliant at it).  If there’s a shady deal to be done, you can bet your sweet bippy that he’s going to be hovering around somehow.  If you don’t know who he is, he’s the one responsible for the hilarious Tevez affair.  He is the face of third party ownership, and he has his disgusting fingers in many disgusting pots.  So who are his clients?  Aside from Tevez two of his biggest clients are Mascherano and Ramires (whom he bought a stake in this year, an idea I still find hilarious).

Now surprise surprise what were two of the stories that Harris nailed this summer?  Mascherano wanting out and Ramires pushing through a move to Chelsea.  Now these were not original stories, but credit to Harris for having early first hand information on both.  They obtained quotes from Ramires begging for his dream move to Chelsea.  He broke the news that Mascherano was asking to leave.  Granted the last one every one saw coming, but he was on it quickest and obviously it did end up being accurate.  So how did he nail these when he so badly botched more high profile moves? Because Joorabchian is his source, that’s how.  It’s no coincidence that the players he happens to have such close sources to (and such accurate ones) is that it has to be their “agent.”  Now this could be dismissed as just paranoia by me, and I would agree, if it weren’t for this: Harry pimped Mark Hughes for Joorabchian.

Yep, I’m seeing this as a possible back scratching situation, which I’m sure is common in the business.  But it would seem advantageous to Joorabchian to have a high profile writer put out a puff piece about his new client, Hughes, who is trying to look for a new job and wants to wipe the stench of Man City’s money off him; in exchange for a few insider tidbits.

Back in July, an article pops up on Soccernet titled “Hughes Advisor Denies Money Suggestions.”  I clicked on it figuring it to be something dealing with a bribe or a dispute over severance with City, but oh man was I wrong.  No it was a puff piece written by Harris to make Hughes sound like a swell guy (which he may be, but “press secretary” isn’t one of the descriptions of Harris’s job, most likely).  But what really blew me away was the open: “Mark Hughes is chasing the big challenge, not the big money, according to his confidante and advisor Kia Joorabchian.” Now nevermind that the idea of Kia being your confidante seems horrifying, but why the hell wasn’t Kia mentioned in the headline?  I would hazard a guess that a good chunk of the Soccernet readers would at least recognize the name, and those who did would be more likely to read it based on the association of Kia being attached to decadent stories.  To me it seems like he is trying to bury the association at the front because he knows how lowly people view Kia.  Harris goes on to discuss how Hughes was wanted by Liverpool and “has the credentials for a top job.”  Then he lets Kia clear the air about all these nasty rumors that he wants a high paying job.  This is essentially a press release by Hughes disguised as a piece of journalism, and it’s crap.

Now of course Hughes did end up getting the Fulham job.  And Harris was on the spot breaking that Hughes had opened negotiations for the position.  This time conveniently not identifying Kia as the source of the insider quotes, though he has to be.  My favorite part of that article is the “Hughes will need persuasion to take the job” bit.  Yep, he just doesn’t care about money or anything!  So I think this is a clear instance of a bit of the old give and take.  Kia helps out Harris in exchange for positive publicity for Sparky.  So keep that in mind whenever he brags about getting a transfer story right, just trace the sources and see what you can find, it’s a fun task.

So yeah he got those right (along with the Benayoun transfer, but in hindsight that one apparently was common knowledge) but he was a bit off on another Chelsea and Liverpool related story.

Roman’s Midnight Train to Johannesburg

I assume he's applauding a puppy being kicked

Again in early July, Harris rolled out this doozy:  Roman Abramovich had jetted out to South Africa to secure the signing of Fernando Torres. This did not happen, but again, it was reported as news by Soccernet.  It’s an exceptional story if it came true, which he was clearly banking on it doing, but in the end Torres proved everyone wrong.  But this was by far the worst and most sloppy of the crop of summer articles about Torres.

So aside from the fact that you can’t secure the signing of a player when you’re not meeting with his club (and he isn’t for sale, minor detail eh Harry?), this is just a preposterous story.  Torres made it clear he would not discuss anything until after the World Cup, a point they even note in this article, yet somehow he is all of a sudden ready to make a deal in the middle of the tournament? Bullshit. You Harry Harris are full of bullshit, and are a terrible person for presenting this as fact when you know people are going to read it and it will explode on the internet.

So when nothing came from Torres in the three weeks after the tournament, Harris had to do something to reignite the story and make it more plausible that Torres was on the way to Chelsea.  Then comes in the lovely Kenny Huang and his mysterious bid to buy the club.  Harris was so giddy at this he had to cut short his squash game with Kia to get his latest barrel of toxic monkeys to press.  Hey I know, let’s claim that Torres will only stay if this takeover goes through this month!

This one obviously ended up not being true either. Torres came out days later saying he had no interest in leaving and would be staying, and that was well before the actual info about the “takeover” and then its failure came out.  It was a dumb move on his part, because he was again banking on Torres actually leaving and then being able to say that it was because the bid (which was clear to fail from the start) failed.  The fact that Torres refuted every claim made this summer should show that his (and the rest of the media’s) sources are clueless.

Again Harris is not alone here. Other “real” media outlets (The Daily Mail) and blogs (The Spoiler) were just as persistent that Torres would be joining Chelsea, hell the latter even kept it up after Torres committed in August.  But nobody reached the ridiculousness of Harris’s imagination this summer.

So those are just three reasons I can’t stand this guy.  Just like every rumor guy he makes stuff up, and is bad at it; when doing so it is presented as news and truth instead of speculation; and he clearly has a relationship with one of the most despicable people in all of sports.

So screw you Harry Harris.  And I didn’t even mention your clear agenda of driving down the value of Liverpool because you also have contacts with investors who want to get in on it and keep releasing negative stories through you to devalue the club. But that’s for another time when The Harry Harris Files continues!  Also if I made any mistakes in here that someone will point out as hypocritical, I’m jacked up on narcotics right now thanks to a bout of pneumonia, so lay off me.