QUOTE:
So Chelsea were to blame for wanting to try and move on someone who was just there taking the piss ?

Taking the piss would be refusing to play, not showing up for training, being drunk, etc. If Bogarde, as an employee of Chelsea, was asked to play, he would play. If asked to train with the Youth team, he'd play with the youth team. He did exactly what he was told for his entire time at Chelsea. I really don't see how this is taking the piss.

QUOTE:
He signed for the money and stayed for the money.

Right, unlike Ballack, Essien, Drogba, Shevchenko and the rest of the true Chelsea heros. Hell, even Zola signed for the money. Welcome to the real world.

So Chelsea were to blame for wanting to try and move on someone who was just there taking the piss ?

you don't know how that started. Bogarde's account of it is very different to ken bates'. and the methods they used to try and get him to move on didn't include (i) paying up the rest of his contract like he was entitled to by law (ii) selling him on and making up the difference in his wages.

What would you have done under the circumstances?

That's how football works you find. Bogarde became such a joke that Chelsea couldn't even haggle out a deal where they could get someone else to pay even part of his wages, like a Robbie Fowler deal.

Is there any evidence that Chelsea offered to do this? Why would bogarde refuse to carry on his career somewhere else on the same wages as he would have got at chelsea.

Why the rush to automatically believe the word of Ken Bates over bogarde? If I were to draw up a list of people I'd believe before ken bates over a business matter, I might even be tempted to include silvio berlusconi on that list.

Personally I think that Chelsea made a terrible mistake in signing him for that contract. Ken Bates tried to fuck him to get out of it, and he refused point blank to be fucked by Ken Bates.

I know who my sympathies lie with.

"They still did it with good intentions though, expecting what was after all a senior player to participate, to want to play, to show he had the slightest degree of professional pride to want to get into the first team and play a part."

Christ dalliance, you posted some total utter shite in your time but this last sentence really takes the fucking biscuit.

"That's the only reason he trained with the youth team. Exemplary professional my arse."

Yeah right Liquidator, because all those other Chelsea players are only motivated by their undying love of the game, the goodwill of the owner, and their massive respect for the fans.

Do better.

As I say unlike you people, I actually watched Bogarde play in week-in week-out. So my opinion of his footballing skills is based on actual observance rather than the propaganda of known racists like Ken Bates. He was, in the day a very good, very quick, solid left back who almost nobody got past.

Now I had no great opinions on Bogarde until I read ‘Deze Neger Buigt voor Niemand’ - The best footballing autobiography I have ever read. Then I became a convinced fan, not so much for Bogarde as a player, but definitely as a man.

I said in a previous thread that Bogarde doesn’t much like white people, but in retrospect that’s an over-simplification. White people are largely irrelevant to him. He’s a very proud man with a very clearly defined sense of self as a black man, and as such has attempted to live his life by his own rules and to his own morale code . He doesn’t need or crave the attention of white people to fulfil himself.

To cut a long story short a sucsession of white people had tried to fuck over him, and almost without exception Bogarde made sure they eventually lost out.

Such a man was of course Ken Bates. Chelsea offered Bogarde a legally binding contract, lecturing him at length about the importance of sticking to the letter of this legally binding document. Then of course proceeded to break the terms of this legally binding document

That’s the beauty of the story, Bogarde took on the white footbaling power structure and defeated them on their own terms. When they tried to humiliate him by making him play with the jeugd, they missed the point that he was not going to be humiliated because he was living by his own carefully nurtured code of honor. When Bates sent expensive prostitutes to his hotel room, in the hopes of entrapping him into using they cocaine they carried, he threw them out.

Bates must have hated him, that alone should make Bogarde a hero for any right-thinking person.

QUOTE:
Christ dalliance, you posted some total utter shite in your time but this last sentence really takes the fucking biscuit.

Says the halfwit who embarrasses himself and this board by claiming that there is a racial motivation in criticising Bogarde.

I'm embarrassed for you and embarrassed for this Board when I read unbelievable shit like that.

QUOTE:
Says the halfwit who embarrasses himself and this board by claiming that there is a racial motivation in criticising Bogarde.

Very good, now go back and re-read what I ACTUALLY said.

While I've no time for the racism rubbish, I totally agree that Bogarde did absolutely nothing wrong in sitting out his Chelsea contract. Why should he acquiesce in being shifted along somewhere else on lower wages just because Chelsea have decided they made a mistake? He had a contract with Chelsea and he had every right to insist that the contract be honoured.

And as aiatl suggested, taking the word of Ken Bates with regards to Bogarde's conduct, motivation etc. is totally idiotic.

Bogarde did nothing wrong whatsoever, in a moral or any other sense.

QUOTE:
I said in a previous thread that Bogarde doesn’t much like white people, but in retrospect that’s an over-simplification. White people are largely irrelevant to him.

Well that's all right then. Sounds like a lovely bloke.

Jari sounds like an unfortunate sort of chap ... the bit about the can of Coke is quite humorous ...

The story that I heard from someone in the Ajax organization (though admittedly it was the head of marketing) was that a lot of Jari's injuries were a cover for his worst periods of depression.

Apparently he had a lot of mysterious ankle and thigh injuries which would magically clear-up after he spent a week sailing his boat round a Finnish lake.

In one of his lengthy absences from Malmö, Litmanen had a skate round the rink at a Lahti Pelicans game and scored two goals in the knockabout with 'old pros'. I think Hodgson was interviewed about it. he knew exactly what he was getting when he signed Litmanen - a guy who could not give a fuck about playing for his club, whichever club that happened to be. For him to start slating jari is quite unexpected, but then he must be feeling the pressure.

About Bogarde: I can't see the problem. He took the money offered and was ready to play whenever asked. I have a bigger problem with Wim Jonk, who was allowed to spend an entire season in Volendam nursing an 'injury', never once coming to the club. Bogarde sounds like he'd have been avaailable for community work, reserve matches, coaching the youth team, whatever, so long as Chelsea had to honour his contract. I can't understand why they didn't offer to make up the difference, as nobody would accept a pay cut like that.

A few comments to make.
Firstly, Dalliance, if i read purple's criticsm's of you correctly, he is not accusing you of being racist, but is accusing of blindly accepting the side of those with racist intentions (bates).
Purple, i remeber you mentioning this autobiography a while back and i was hoping you could to a translation or at least a write up of the interesting bits as i guess this is not available in English.

Regarding the Ajax players, I think that team was much better than its constituent parts and this also seem to breed a certain tactical inflexibility in the players.

They were world-beaters when playing the Dutch-Ajax way, yet struggled to show their top-class on a consistent basis.

Although playing as a defender, Frank De Boer was not much as a defender and this became more and more aparent the older he got. Just like it did on the player he replaced in the national team Koeman.
Ronald De Boer struggled as his role for Ajax was not clearly defined and he could not adapt toplaying a more disciplined role at his later teams as he was not a conventional midfeilder, attacker or even a second striker.
Finidi played his best football off the ball, and struggled subsequently as teams expected him to run with the ball and dribble alot which was not what made him a great player.
Overmaars did well at Arsenal and only tailed off in the last couple of months when it became aparent he was leaving.
Davids had to re-invent his game before he started to become a success.
Seedorf left pretty early in his career and had the most successful and decorated career of the lot but still has detractors at milan and madrid despite having won more European cups than anyone in the history of the game (no doubt Ettiene will prove me wrong)
I could continue......

That Ajax team was a great team, but what made them a great teams seems to have made those players incapable of playing any of ther style as effectively was the structure enhanced thier individual abilities whilst masking their deficiencies.
Which by the way, is what every good team should be.
In 98, when most of the Dutch players were having pretty poor seasons in Milan and Barcelona, Holland reached the World Cup semi-final.
Go-Figure.

I'd also be interested in the book if it were available. I don't think the racism stuff is far fetched, given the way black footballers are treated in many countries. If his ethos has enabled him to stop ken Bates fucking him over, that's fantastic, and he is a lot stronger than many black men who are fucked over by football clubs. I'd like to see Zeddy saileti (a Zambian with 14 years service for RoPs, who has taken a coaching role this year and bitchslapped the timeserving 'Finnish legend' Mika Nurmela into accepting that he has to change his role after moving from HJK) write a memoir about what he's experienced.