There were nothing but losers from Antoine Griezmann's stunt last night, in which he whipped the world into a frenzy over a LeBron-style 'decision' over his club future. Having been heavily courted by Manchester United last summer, Griezmann surprised many by deciding to stay at Atletico Madrid but it was assumed that he would move on this summer, with Barcelona the expected destination (To such an extent that Luis Suarez spoke of 'when Griezmann comes' in an interview toward the end of last season).
With thousands watching on last night, however, Griezmann revealed that he is, in fact, going nowhere and is going to stay at Atleti.
So who are the losers here? You could say Griezmann, who indulged in this shite. But he knows he can attract a mass audience by doing literally nothing, so he is the real winner. The biggest losers, of course, are the rest of us who got excited by this and tuned in only to find out that nothing had changed and now await Southampton's weary parody of the stunt in which they announce their groundsman has decided not to fuck off to Portsmouth after all.
There are other losers, however. What is discipline like in the French camp if Griezmann is allowed to do this, days before their opening game at a World Cup? But we bet nobody is feeling worse over this than the embattled Barcelona board. Having lost Neymar last summer and thrown away the windfall on Ousmane Dembele and Phil Coutinho (very good players, undoubtedly, but overpriced) the board expected to make Griezmann their marquee signing of this summer.
That's not going to happen now, and the Barca board were reportedly blindsided by Griezmann's announcement last night. As journalist Dermot Corrigan points out, however, it beggars belief that they didn't know this announcement was coming given that the video was, eh, produced by Gerard Pique.
On last night's other big news, pretty crazy that Pique's production company made the Griezmann documentary, and Barca's board didnt know anything about it until yesterday...
— Dermot Corrigan (@dermotmcorrigan) June 15, 2018
More a mess of a club than mes que un club.
