Picture this – everyday you go to your day-job, without fail. You do your tasks to the best of your ability. Maybe you’re not the best employee in your company, but you are known for being a hard-working individual who doesn’t shy away from taking responsibility. Then one day, you get to know that you’re being transferred to a different city after your friends gossip about you. No call from your company bosses, no texts, no emails. Just a surprise rumour heard from a colleague. How would you feel?
Clarity. One of the most underrated, yet most valuable elements of any relationship. However, with Jakub Kiwior’s loan deal to Porto, Arsenal’s failure to communicate the deal to the player has shed the spotlight on a problem plaguing football media. Fans have started to ridicule the Gunners on their mismanagement of the Polish international. However, the story, like most interesting stories in world football, isn’t that black-and-white. Perhaps Arsenal, despite their flawed approach in dealing with their star, isn’t fully to blame for the media ruckus created by Kiwior’s surprising transfer.
Fabrizio Romano, undoubtedly, needs no introduction. In the last few years, his name has become synonymous with news and updates in the transfer window, with his famous “Here We Go” phrase becoming the Holy Grail of transfer news, his three-word statement often arriving as a sharp, surgical arrow through the heart of media outlets. No matter where you go, you can’t escape the journalistic monster known as Fabrizio Romano. You cannot separate transfer windows and Romano, the latter being in a symbiotic relationship with players, agents, news sources and clubs.
However, the journalistic integrity of Romano is slowly coming to be questioned by more ardent fans, who like to check facts before jumping at the sight of another Photoshopped image of a player in a different club kit. Yes, “Here We Go” is still the second-most popular three-word phrase after a certain one that begins with I and ends with You (the middle word is a rarity), except we are more likely to read Romano’s phrase more.
Romano’s powerful position as the most famous football journalist has also opened up a clear debate between two factions. One side clearly takes Romano as the second coming of Christ and finds his news sacred, while the other side prefers to wait for official statements from football clubs before jumping to conclusions. However, newer fans resonate more with Fabrizio and are surely able to relate more to “Here We Go” than “Communicado Oficial”.
Jakub Kiwior would probably fall into the second category.
The Polish international has had an unstable career at Arsenal, where he has shown glimpses of potential amidst injuries and infrequent gametime. His transfer to Porto was well documented, with Arsenal rejecting Porto’s first bid around the beginning of August. News outlets believed that Kiwior’s departure was dependent on Arsenal sealing the Piero Hincapié deal from Leverkusen, allowing them to move Kiwior out of their back four.
The transfer negotiations went well underway despite a stop-start process, as is common in many negotiations. Kiwior, meanwhile, was unsettled with his future, coming to training with his Gunner teammates despite not knowing if that would be his last training day. In a just world, surely, the clubs were going to announce his signing at a stipulated time of mutual agreement, and Kiwior would get his peace of mind after a few days of anxiety.
But it wasn’t like that at all.
On 29th August, a couple of days before Kiwior’s official transfer would be eventually announced, Fabrizio Romano swooped in like a bird of prey and spread his dreaded “Here We Go”-shaped claws on Arsenal. Kiwior, at training, would get to know from his teammates that his transfer was confirmed.
Moreover, Romano had even listed the financial and contractual specifics of the deal, basically waterproofing the news before the 25-year-old Polish defender could have his post-training protein shake.
Although a comical ending to the transfer saga, Kiwior’s arrival at Porto showcases the reach, power, and driven nature of journalists like Romano. With his vast social media following and celebrity status, Kiwior’s incident seems less like a rare exception and more like the eventual norm.
