Last week, FIFA chief Sepp Blatter said “there’s too much modern slavery” in soccer, and he has a point. While the situation has been somewhat improved, “talent scouts” still sell African players into restrictive, laughably low-wage contracts at unscrupulous European clubs… Oh, he’s talking about Christiano Ronaldo. I see. Just go ahead and ignore the previous few sentences.

I understand that the liberal establishment has given folks my age a biased view of our Civil War, but  slavery had something to do with it, right?. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think soccer was involved in the slavery issue. Perhaps Frederick Douglass really, really wanted a move to Inter Milan, but if he did, it doesn’t show up anywhere in his writings. I don’t recall the Bosman ruling coming up at Appomattox, although Grant was a fierce champion of unrestricted alcohol sales at soccer matches. Comparing the plight of Christiano Ronaldo (who makes about $240,000 a week) to, you know, slavery is, besides incorrect, just a tad bit insensitive.

Let’s forget for a moment that Blatter was injecting himself into a transfer saga between two club teams (a spat that’s at least two levels of bureaucracy below Blatter). Let’s forget that Blatter, as FIFA president, has no business taking sides in this sort of thing. Let’s even forget that Blatter’s tenure makes Bud Selig look like Judge Landis when it comes to running a sport. Even setting all of those things aside, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

It would be understandable if he compared the current transfer structure to indentured servitude (which is somewhat close to the truth, but not in a prejorative way), or something like that, but dragging out the rhetorical howitzer is, in this case, as appropriate as a Hampshire student calling President Bush a brownshirt. You know what reminds me of slavery? Actual slavery, and that’s about it.

On a side note, I’ve had it up to here (you’ll just have to imagine the hand gesture) with the Ronaldo transfer saga.  For the past two months, we’ve been in the same place. ManU doesn’t want to sell, Real wants to wildly overpay for a player who will regress after joining Madrid (everyone regresses after joining Real, thanks to the ridiculous pressure. If you think the New York sports media is bad, take a look at Madrid’s) and doesn’t really fit into their scheme (at ManU, Ronaldo, Tevez and Rooney were pretty much interchangable at the top of the formation, and made on-the-fly adjustments throughout the game. Real already has a striker in Nistelrooy, and with Robben, Robinho, Raul and Sneijder, lack the flexibility to slot Ronaldo in as anything but a traditional winger). I don’t want to hear a word about this transfer until it gets done, or Sept. 1 passes without a deal. “Will he, or won’t he” is perfectly fine for middle school gossip, but surely there’s something else to report on. Like whether or not FIFA’s bylaws allow impeachment.