By Tayo Amosu
August 12, 2014
Barcelona has announced the signing of Thomas Vermaelen from Arsenal on a 5 year deal for a fee of £15m.
After a summer of being linked to Manchester United and Barcelona, the Arsenal Captain, Thomas Vermaelen, signed for Barcelona FC, where the Gunners signed Alexis Sanchez from.
Vermaelen would be Arsenal’s third captain to be snapped up by Barcelona in recent times, with Thierry Henry and Cesc Fabregas moving that direction some years back.
Fans however, have expressed their excitement at this development, which was not the case when Henry and Fabregas left the club. This cannot be dissociated with the new air of confidence, belief, trust in the manager and hope of a great season without the Belgian.
Departures from clubs are reacted to by fans in very different ways. For Arsenal, departures of players like Thierry Henry, Dennis Bergkamp, Robert Pires, Frederik Ljunberg, Gilberto Silva and even Eduardo, were painful but met with a lot of applause and standing ovations acknowledging how well they served the club.
Same cannot be said of the exits of Patrick Vieira, Emmanuel Adebayor, Ashley Cole, Gael Clichy, Robin Van Persie and now Cesc Fabregas, whose unceremonious departures were termed as disloyal, and an act of abandonment.
On this Vermaelen deal, fans have showered praise on the club for refusing to sell the Belgium International to rivals Manchester United and also to the player on the way he conducted himself well while he was out with no game time, losing his place to the Per Mertersacker-Laurent Koscielny Centre Back partnership.
He never complained about lack of game time and worked as hard as anybody.
‘‘He’d go down in history as the captain who broke the 9 year trophy drought. Vermaelen’s last farewell gift to Arsenal was joining Barcelona instead of Manchester United’’; some fans have expressed on tweeter.
Barcelona who just recently saw their captain and centre back, Carles Puyol, reluctantly retiring from football with series of nagging knee injuries, desires to have a dependable defender to fill the centre back position in a bid to strengthen their back line against the assault of Spanish La Liga attackers.
This summer, Barcelona FC have added to their squad by bringing in Luis Suarez from Liverpool, Jeremy Mathieu from Valencia and Ivan Rakitic from Sevilla and are set to add defensive strength to their squad with this Vermaelen deal, which would see the 28-year-old player walk in to stabilize a depleted defence.
Vermaelen, who Wenger said to the press had injury worries ahead of the Emirates Cup matches, represented his country Belgium in the recently concluded 2014FIFA World Cup held in Brazil.
Thomas Vermaelen, known as the ‘‘Verminator’’ amongst Arsenal fans, joined Arsenal in the summer of the 2009/2010 season and rose to become the captain of the team following the transfer of Robin Van Persie to Manchester United in August 2012.
He was known to be a very good goal scoring defender who lifted his team on many occasions.
However, consistent poor performances for Arsenal, notably against big teams, which coincided with strong and outstanding displays from Per Mertersacker and Laurent Koscielny, saw him drop the perking order in the Arsenal defence line-up.
This summer, Arsene Wenger has proved that Arsenal mean business and are ready to compete effectively for the EPL title by signing quality players and most importantly, refuse to gift rival clubs their best players all in the name of a financial model to ease off debts incurred from the Emirates stadium construction.
The end of that era is here and marks the beginning of trophy winning and general success.
