Life is never boring as a Barnet supporter and that was certainly the case last night when the club revealed “Dutch legend Davids signs for Barnet FC” – two weeks after rumours had previously been spread across Twitter.
September 24th:
Although a lot of the comments at this time have been deleted, fans and players alike were adamant it wasn’t just rumour and there was more to it than just a visit to The Hive. The youth player who initially tweeted claiming he saw Davids at the training ground (with Theo Walcott – apparently filming an advertisement) removed the ‘gossip’ and later apologised for getting everyone’s hopes up. But in the end, I guess he was right after all.
So to last night, and the first I – and many others – saw of it this time round was via the club’s official Twitter account: “Dutch legend; former Barcelona, Juventus, Ajax and AC Milan midfielder Edgar Davids joins Barnet and becomes joint head coach with Mark Robson”. This quickly spread like wildfire with over 1200 retweets at the time of writing. A mere 20 minutes later Karl Bates tweeted: “hard to believe but I have had confirmation from the club, Davids is now a Bee as reported earlier”. The man himself even took to Twitter:
I still don’t think it has properly sunk in either – how have we, little Barnet, bottom of the Football League managed such a coup? Obviously he’s been living in London, but had he even heard of Barnet before? More importantly, Edgar himself claims he will fulfil a “player/coach” position – didn’t he retire two years ago following a rather unimpressive stint at Crystal Palace? Has he even got his coaching badges or got any experience in that kind of role? There seems to be hundreds of questions running through my head and we’ll have to wait and find out the answers. Whether or not it ends up being a good appointment, from a PR point of view, it’s an excellent call – attendance this Saturday against Plymouth should certainly be better than the last couple of home games, and apparently Davids shirts are already on sale, that should certainly make a bit of money! Everyone seems to have Davids fever – I just wonder when that novelty will wear off.
My personal reaction was “wow”. I just remember watching him for Holland when I was younger and thinking he was really cool because of his hair and those goggles – although I never understood why it was he wore them. A couple of people that claimed they “didn’t see that coming” obviously turned a blind eye to the hoo-ha that went on the last time the rumours took over social media. On reading the news, I ran upstairs to my dad who was attempting to go to sleep. His reaction: “that’s absolute drugs”, followed by: “he’s 39, retired and hardly set the world alight in his previous spell at Palace”. At this point, I hadn’t realised he’d be playing.
As if often the case with news like this, it didn’t take long for fans of other clubs to pipe up. There was a fair bit of laughing and mocking – not sure if that was aimed at him or us – one fan even said: “and to think I used to like him”. My personal favourite, however, had to be this:
@chris_brookes: “just seen your team for Saturday – Van der Sar, Reiziger, De Boer, Blind, Bogarde, Overmars, Seedorf, Winter, Zenden, John, Mols”.
This wasn’t the only madness at Barnet either, on September 22nd the club revealed: “International forward signs” – that forward being former Dutch star, Collins John.
It was also reported on Tuesday he will finally be eligible for selection having received international clearance. Will he play a part in Saturday’s game against Plymouth?
And it isn’t just crazy old Barnet, everyone went mad earlier in the week when recently relegated Chesterfield revealed that they had signed Luis Boa Morte. Clearly League Two is where it’s at.
So, what next:
Fernando Morientes to Burton Albion?
‘Fat’ Ronaldo enjoying a stint at somewhere like Accrington or Rochdale (for the pies obviously)?
Maybe even Zinedine Zidane swapping the French Riviera for England’s equivalent; Torquay?
Who knows how this will pan out and how long it will last (just remember Sven and Sol Campbell at Notts County!); although it seems like utter madness, surely there’s some method in the madness?
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