“Desperado, why don’t you come to your senses? ” sang The Eagles in their classic song Desperado and it’s not only that opening line that had me thinking of Owen Hargreaves as I listened through the rest of the song this morning. To the untrained eye, Herr Hargreaves would seem to have pretty much everything that a young man in his mid-20s could ever want.

He silenced his critics at the World Cup when they doubted the merits of his very inclusion in the 23 man England squad and forced them to eat humble pie as he put in several accomplished, if understated, performances to come away as many England fan’s Man of the Tournament.

He plays his club football for one of the world’s biggest and most famous clubs alongside some of Europe’s finest footballing talents at Bayern Munich and has risne through the ranks of that club since he was 16 years old to command a first team spot with added responsibilities following the departure of captain Michael Ballack.

He, undoubtedly, earns a small fortune and the pay cheque he carries home every week must include more zeroes than most of us watching him play could earn in a year but still it doesn’t seem to be enough for him.

His increasingly embarassing attempts to force Bayern Munich into selling him to Manchester United are about to reach an all-time low as he plans a press conference to outline his reasons for looking to leave despite having signed an extension to his Munich contract until 2010 last season.

Munich are understandably livid, mainly with Manchester United, and are threatening the English club with being brought before FIFA to explain their conduct in the Hargreaves affair. Karl-Heinz Rummenigge has made his and his club’s position very clear without any kind of veiled threat:

“We have told Manchester United to drop their interest, or we will have to turn to FIFA,” he told Munich’s Tz newspaper.

“A club can only contact a player when the club, who owns the player’s registration, is in agreement.

“We are not Hamburg, who let Khalid Boulahrouz go at the first sign he wants out. We are FC Bayern.

“We do not just let anybody go - the employer decides here, not the employee.”

Big words from a very influential man in the European game. United are coming out of the affair with as little dignity as Hargreaves himself. They were quick to condemn Chelsea in the Jon Obi Mikel saga and are now conducting their own business in exactly the same way with Hargreaves with specualtion from the player no less that they have already agreed personal terms behind Munich’s back, a fact that will not stand them in good stead with FIFA if they are brought before the governing body.

It could take a firm stance from Munich to finally show Alex Ferguson and Manchester United that they won’t be bullied into selling one of their players so close to the transfer deadline and with four years remaining on Hargreaves contract, they aren’t at risk of a Bosman style escape next summer.

Who has the stronger will as it enters the final straight of this summer? I’ll let Don Henley and co. have the final word on what we’ve found out about Owen Hargreaves this summer:

Now it seems to me, some fine things
Have been laid upon your table
But you only want the ones that you can’t get
Desperado

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 23rd, 2006 at 9:29 am and is filed under Manchester United. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.