Regulars
SPORT
Adrian Mutu will never play for Juventus

by Craig Turp
February 2005

Hardly had the new year begun that the Romanian sporting press – which alas gets worse by the week – was lauding to the heavens the news that Adrian Mutu, currently serving a six-month suspension from all football for cocaine abuse while at Chelsea, had been snapped up in the winter transfer window by Juventus, the biggest club in Italy’s Serie A. Mutu, a free agent since Chelsea sacked him in October, will earn amillion euros per year while under contract with the Turin-based Juventus. At Chelsea he was earning four million euros per year.

Mutu’s suspension ends two games before the end of the Italian season. With Juventus currently running neck and neck with Milan, and the Serie A championship looking set to be undecided until the very last game of the season, it is highly unlikely that Mutu will be thrown in to the action at that stage. Impossible even. After such a long absence a player needs time, and lots of it, to settle back into football.

Indeed, it is this writer’s opinion that Mutu will in fact never play for Juventus, and that the Romanian sporting press - in its desire to show how wonderful a player Mutu is - has got it wrong, again. Desperate for good news, it portrayed Mutu’s transfer to Juventus as a sign that the player they so want to be a world-class success had been forgiven his sins and was once again amongst the world’s best. He had to be, Juventus has signed him, went the logic. Wrong. Juventus have signed Mutu to sell or bargain him. Juventus want Adriano Cassanno, the exciting young Roma forward, who will unquestionably leave Roma in the summer. Passing Mutu to Roma in part-exchange will ease the blow to Roma and its supporters.

For the fools who write about football in the Romanian press this is an unpalatable truth. And while I understand their desire to see Romanians doing well abroad, it should not cloud their judgement. When it comes to Adrian Mutu, the Romanian press is not just clouded; it is blinded to each and every one of his faults, and – more importantly for football journalists – to the fact that he is a very average player.

It is to be hoped that the press will treat Romania’s next starlet better. Claudiu Keseru, just 18, has quietly been impressing all comers in France this season, where he plays for Nantes. A Transylvanian plucked from obscurity by the Nantes scouting staff he is a quiet, unassuming and apparently intelligent lad. We can but hope that he will be left in peace to play football, so that people can decide for themselves whether he is a good player or not. The Romanian sporting press would do well to learn from its lousy treatment of Adrian Mutu. An 18-year-old like Keseru needs their support and their objective reporting of his progress. He does not need their fawning or their star making. Let the boy make his own mistakes.

Craig Turp edits Bucharest in your Pocket.