Whatever Happened To Reserving Judgment?

Had online football journalism 'developed' to 2015 proportions in 2003, there would have been articles with titles like 'Past It: How Twitter reacted to Makelele move', 'Chelsea sign 'average' troublemaker Makelele' and 'Ten Other Over-Priced and Over-The-Hill Signings'. Claude Makelele was 30, he cost £16m and he had gone on strike to force through a move to Chelsea that he later admitted was almost entirely about money. That was the summer that Chelsea spent over £111m, including £17m on Damien Duff, £15m on Juan Sebastian Veron, £15.8m on Adrian Mutu, £9.8m on Scott Parker and £16.8m on Hernan Crespo; Makelele was the last in the door and fans of other clubs laughed at the ridiculousness of spending so much money on a 30-year-old. Chelsea fans were mildly embarrassed; they were yet to develop the thick blue skin of the nouveau riche. The words of Real president Florentino Perez - "We will not miss Makélelé. His technique is average, he lacks the speed and skill to take the ball past opponents, and 90% of his distribution either goes backwards or sideways. He wasn't a header of the ball and he rarely passed the ball more than three metres. Younger players will arrive who will cause Makélelé to be forgotten" - were particularly damning. They would have picked up rather more traction in 2015. Both the F365 Mailbox and my own involvement with Football365 date back to before 2003 and I remember widespread cynicism at this summer of scattergun spending by Chelsea, with particular criticism for the signings of Veron, Crespo and Makelele, who were said to have struggled at bigger clubs and were clearly only lured to Stamford Bridge by the new influx of petrodollars. While the other two players were - at best - qualified successes, Makelele was a revelation. In a different era, an awful lot of spitefully favourited 'what a waste of money' tweets would have been re-tweeted.
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