Gio Ready To Be Heading Home?

The tag of phe­nom can be taken off of for­mer Barcelona youth player Gio­vanni Dos San­tos.  After the hype that the Cata­lan media made about this kid being one of the stars of the future for the blau­grana, he ended up in Lon­don.  After the Mex­i­can media anointed him as their sav­ior, that title seemed to have lost its lus­ter.   There was lots of excite­ment with him com­ing on to the pitch, but he along with many other Barcelona play­ers faded into com­plete obliv­ion.
It´s a sad case that we are see­ing develop, and this all came to a ¨cli­max¨ early in Decem­ber when the British tabloids plas­tered a pic­ture of a ¨plas­tered¨ Dos San­tos at the Spurs Christ­mas party.  It was a mis­take, it was unfor­tu­nate… but how many other play­ers have been ine­bri­ated and done worse things.  I don´t want to sound like I am try­ing to defend or con­demn any­thing any­one has done.
There is one big win­ner in all of this– Barcelona.  Spurs man­ager Harry Red­knapp wants him gone and there are a cou­ple of teams that could have him dur­ing the trans­fer win­dow.  Gio has not been able to adapt to the Pre­mier­ship but there are   Mex­i­can side Chivas is get­ting ready to swoop in.  There is also the pos­si­bil­ity of him mak­ing a move to Mid­dles­broughin order for the club to obtain more expe­ri­enced Pre­mier League play­ers. The sec­ond offer for Dos San­tos could have a lit­tle more sub­stance and ben­e­fit to both sides.  In the end, send­ing the young­ster to Mex­ico as there would be even more money com­ing in through that stream as com­pared to throw­ing him in as an add-on.

Regard­less of who gets the for­mer Mex­i­can U-17 champ would mean ¨mo´money, mo´money¨ for the Cata­lans.  A stip­u­la­tion in their con­tract with Spurs states that Barcelona would get 20% of the money earned if he were to leave the club within the first two years he was there.  That would go down to 10 if it were to occur after the afore­men­tioned two years.
His not a case of num­bers, it goes beyond that.  Gio is only 19 years old and in a span of four years he became from being The One to being Another One.   Hey, he’s only 19 and how many of us lacked com­mon sense and did that type of stuff at that stage of our lives.  There was a much greater issue here.  But let’s let bygones be bygones and old news fade away.  His con­fi­dence went down expo­nen­tially from month to month.  He has only played in six matches this year, eight if you include the UEFA Cup.   It’s a case of these big clubs want­ing so much from a teenager so quickly that any­thing they don’t do is looked down as either a lack of effort or a lack
Hey, at least he’s got two more starts than Car­los Vela.  This is why if a pos­si­ble move to Chivas would be the best thing for him.   It would be a chance to get some home cook­ing and get his head on straight.   He is still young and he could get a chance at revenge.