Key Points
The downside is that he must endure the occasional indignity of hearing his name whistled and jeered and taken in vain..
The pursuit of the European Super League, the appointment of Xavi Hernandez as manager, the mortgaging of its own future for immediate glory - this is the desperate, thrashing reflex of a club that assumed its primacy was the natural order of things, and does not understand why the world has been allowed to change..
Neither, though, was nearly as damaging as the charge, currently under investigation by both the Spanish judicial authorities and UEFA, European soccer's governing body, that the club paid a former vice president of Spain's refereeing committee about $7.6 million over the course of 17 years...
Barcelona, of course, has insisted it has done nothing wrong: The club has suggested the stipend it is accused of paying the official, Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira, between 2001 and 2018 was for perfectly ordinary "technical reports into refereeing.".
None of those decisions were especially flagrant examples of the caprice of Premier League owners, of course, but the failures of both Conte and Potter probably say more about the people who appointed them than they do about the coaches themselves...
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