The Kakana sale: saved or sold?

So the long-awaited first game of the season is behind us and the much anticipated sale of arguably Thai football's brightest new star has finally been confirmed. I'll have plenty to say about both these things, along with a review of the new kits and new players when fate allows, but for now I just need to speak on Kanana and some of the English-language coverage of his departure.

Most English sites covering Thai football are, like this one, a passion project. They are ran by good people neither aiming nor desiring an income. For the most part, this is a net positive that avoids requests for "premium subscriptions' and the inevitable enshittification of less-niche websites. However, there are downsides to the amateur field and some of those weaknesses may have been exposed in some of the coverage.

Firstly, football fans often allow their emotion to override their logic when it comes to the business side of transfers. Perhaps a few don't really understand it at all. Several posts on on social media have described Bangkok United as "saving" Muangthong with the 20 million baht plus Rivaldinhio transfer. Sometimes this was expressed solely, sometimes with the justification that it happened less than a week before the registration deadline, meaning that if the sale didn't happen, we would be unable to register new players and we'd be doomed. In fact, for the debacle at Uttaradit, we only had five subs and three of those were goalies.

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the business side of football. Relegated clubs are not stupid, they know clubs will swoop for their best players and the early offers will probably be lowball. It's not exclusive to Muangthong. Southampton rejected four bids from Liverpool for Romeo lavia before Chelsea came in with a higher offer. It's called brinksmanship and it's a test of how much the bidding club want the asset and how much the selling club truly believe he is worth. Does anybody seriously think 20 million plus a player was BKU's opening offer? It's likely several bids from several clubs were knocked back before that.

Imagine you have twenty million dollars in your pocket and you walk into a sports car dealership. You see a top of the range Ferrari you have been planning to purchase for some time. You know - or heard - that the dealer is struggling financially so you offer 15 mil but the dealer says no. They want twenty million plus part exchange. You think about it carefully. You agree to close the deal.

Did you "save" the dealership? Did you hand over the money to make sure nobody was unemployed or shut down? If so, why not hand over the cash and go home empty-handed? No, you made the deal because you decided the asset (Ferrari) is worth more to you than the resources (money and old car) you are exchanging. The dealer felt the same in reverse. That, my friends, is how business works and whether we like it or not, modern football is big business.

Meanwhile, I'm told another website is continuing to run articles on MTUTD with AI pictures describing the demise of the club and talking of selling "the family silver'.  It's also the same site that intentionally misrepresented the club as having a "No water for kids policy" for their own child when in fact everyone is just asked to pour drinks into a paper cup due to ground regulations. As the old saying goes: when someone shows you who they are, believe them.

As for Kakana himself, he's handled the whole thing with class. It seems very likely he had many reasons to be frustrated over the last year but he's always given 101% for the club and left a classy farewell message to the fans. He'll fit in well with some of his old teammates at Bangkok United and may he have a sterling career ahead of him.

Now we just have to see how much of Dad's talent Rivaldinhio has inherited......