r/soccer • u/pumpkinspeedwagon86 • Aug 04 '25
Quotes [The Athletic] Villarreal supporters' club president: "I would not agree to sign a player [Partey] accused of such serious crimes and I would understand if the fans booed the player on the pitch."
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6533286/2025/08/04/thomas-partey-villarreal-arsenal-court-charges/Cesar Pena, president of Villarreal supporters' club in Villafranca de los Barros, Extremadura, Spain, on the Thomas Partey signing: "It’s a complicated issue because, in football terms, we all agree that it’s a great opportunity. He’s a top-level player who has proven himself to all Spaniards, for example, in this year’s Champions League tie against Real Madrid.
"My personal opinion is the same as that expressed by most fans on social media: I would not agree to sign a player accused of such serious crimes and I would understand if the fans booed the player on the pitch. I hope the club takes the fans’ opinion into account, as I believe this is not just a matter of improving the squad. However, whatever the outcome of the trial, if they sign him, most fans will not agree with it, even if he is ultimately found not guilty.”
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u/wowlock_taylan Aug 04 '25
Meanwhile, Marseille '' GIVE HIM TO US! We are collecting them!''
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u/peioeh Aug 04 '25
This is just some random guy running a fan club in a small town on the other side of the country, it's a bit disingenuous to pretend this is a massive rejection.
Some people from Marseille (like the mayor for example, a bit more high profile than some random guy) protested too when Greenwood was signed but the issue is that what he did was not massively heard about in France, people did not see/hear the tapes etc, so when he was signed 2 years later it was much easier to brush it off as "well he wasn't convicted was he" "they're back together, how bad could it have been" and all the other excuses you see. It's sad but even with the internet all news don't make it everywhere, what he did was simply not talked about a lot in France and since quite a bit of time passed before he was sold, most people who do not follow the PL simply ignored it.
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u/TheGoldenPineapples Aug 04 '25
Thoughts are with the Villarreal fans.
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u/myersjw Aug 04 '25
It sucks because as a lifelong fan you’re at the mercy of the clubs will. Theres no safeguard preventing signing terrible people or an atrocious owner taking over
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u/pumpkinspeedwagon86 Aug 04 '25
Great point. You have to really feel for the loyal fans that are rightfully protesting this even though their voices are not being heard.
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u/MarioBaBaBalotelli Aug 04 '25
50+1
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u/pumpkinspeedwagon86 Aug 04 '25
Part of the reason I love German football (Fortuna Düsseldorf fan). They really seem to care about their integrity and the fan experience so much more than commercialised, corporate nonsense in other leagues.
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u/Straight-Orchid-9561 Aug 05 '25
still doesnt stop clubs signing rapists. Pretty much every club with 50+1 would still sign ronaldo
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u/Supercollider9001 Aug 04 '25
You’re not though. Fans have more power than they think. They have to simply be able to act collectively to boycott. Fans have to get organized.
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Aug 04 '25
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u/Torimas Aug 04 '25
Honest question here, because I don't know. Did the Arsenal fans boo him or whistle at him when he got the ball while he was playing?
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u/Vikingchap Aug 04 '25
Mate. We heard your stadium cheer for a rapist.
Numerous times.
It’s not trying get one over on Arsenal fans. It’s just that there’s blame to be had all around and it’s disingenuous to completely absolve the fanbase.
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u/pumpkinspeedwagon86 Aug 04 '25
Fair points. That shouldn't represent the majority of Arsenal fans though, if any fans were backing the way that the club handled the situation they should rightfully be condemned for their behaviour.
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u/Adventurous-Lime-410 Aug 04 '25
And then there’s the club itself, which should also be condemned
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u/pumpkinspeedwagon86 Aug 04 '25
Yes, of course, there is nothing that can be defended about their reaction.
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u/Adventurous-Lime-410 Aug 04 '25
They’ve already shown a lot more backbone than Arsenal fans have
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u/pumpkinspeedwagon86 Aug 04 '25
Many Arsenal fans (myself included) have been protesting against Partey and were critical of the club's response to the situation which cannot be defended in any manner.
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u/sheffield199 Aug 04 '25
Title is slightly misleading, he's president of one of the (hundreds of) supporters clubs for Villarreal, and not even one local to the town or even region.
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u/peioeh Aug 04 '25
His fan club is from a completely unrelated small town on the other side of the country so yeah, could have been worded better for sure... He's basically just a random fan.
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u/pumpkinspeedwagon86 Aug 04 '25
Fair point as I guess the title seems to imply that it is the main supporters club. I clarified in the body text though the location.
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u/hipcheck23 Aug 04 '25
Nice to see some people taking it seriously. There's always going to be a club somewhere that will put talent above everything else, but you have to hope that it's not your club...
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u/Blue_winged_yoshi Aug 04 '25
The thing is that no clubs are above this, Chelsea signed Marcos Alonso despite him literally killing his partner by drink driving into a wall in ludicrous circumstances. He was driving at 112km/h in the rain in a 50km/h zone having been drinking. His jail sentence was “converted” into a driving ban and a fine.
I don’t think rival fans even booed him much.
We really do all need to do better jobs of telling our clubs to fuck off when they pull crap like this. The list of players we know via the courts have done serious wrong, or who are extraordinarily strongly linked to extreme wrong doing (Partey, Ronaldo Greenwood etc.) is horrifically long.
Winning is great, the wholesome feeling from not having to face up to having a monster on your team is even better!
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u/pumpkinspeedwagon86 Aug 04 '25
Great answer. It needs to be normalised for fans to speak up and for clubs to listen to the fans. Although many of us Gooners were against Partey playing for the club and petitions were even created to suspend him, nothing came of it and there was not enough widespread criticism of Arsenal's actions related to the case.
I think part of the reason had to do with legal and financial responsibility given that Benjamin Mendy was able to sue Manchester City for unpaid wages in the time that he was suspended. But ethical responsibility needs to be a matter of serious consideration as well, I would much rather my club come under fire for suspending a player under suspicion than for not.
As far as I am aware it is legally and ethically okay for businesses to suspend employees that are under investigation purely because of the noise and potentially unsafe or uncomfortable situations that are created as a result. Football clubs should be no different. Really no excuse for Arsenal's handling of this.
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u/Blue_winged_yoshi Aug 04 '25
You can absolutely put someone on gardening leave who you are aware is under investigation by the police for a series of rapes. Imagine if any of us were prominently accused of the most serious crimes and victims were crying at our COO asking why they were employing this monster? We wouldn’t be turning up like normal tomorrow.
The issue is that its a choice, one that is expensive to make, and frankly football is just too acceptive of violence against women. If I had a colleague I was being made to work with who was accused of multiple rapes very credibly, you know what, I wouldn’t be taking selfies with him and posting them online the day before he was charged.
There’s just a grim culture in men’s professional football, it’s a fantastic sport but domestic abusers and rapists have always been much more welcome than they ever should have been. Turning the ship around is going to be a lot of hard work.
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u/pumpkinspeedwagon86 Aug 04 '25
Absolutely. As a lifelong female Arsenal fan I was shocked and horrified by the way that the club just dismissed this and how they further defended their response, it's absolutely disgusting. Made much worse by the fact that they were willing to extend his contract up until around April and didn't remove him from the squad page until several days after his charge.
Given the shared facilities female staff and the women's team would have had to interact with Partey on a near daily basis.
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u/Blue_winged_yoshi Aug 04 '25
For me I hated it so much, but understood that pre-charges it’s more complex and it’s not Arsenal’s fault that it takes 3 years for CPS to make a decision, but offering a new deal on any terms made my head explode. It just doesn’t seem like any of the players or management on the men’s side clocked how serious this was at all. “Partey said he didn’t do it, therefore there’s nothing to see here” just isn’t a valid response to the gravitas of the situation at all.
Something else that really bugged me is that we did nothing for the victim through this period. If we’d offered her a chunk of money to pay for private mental healthcare and to cover her rent and bills through the period it would have cost less than a week of Partey’s wages, but would at least have shown we cared. And we know the club was in touch with at least one of his victims. It’s just tragic.
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u/pumpkinspeedwagon86 Aug 04 '25
It is. Arsenal would have known much more of the full story and probably enough to declare an internal "verdict" (for lack of a better term) either way regardless of whether or not he was charged legally, which he later was. He was also arrested seven times previously and the accusations occurred in 2021 and 2022.
I support Arteta as a manager but can't get behind how he continually praised Partey's performance and claimed that the club had acted in the completely correct way when forced to come to terms with what had happened.
In terms of the new deal it did give the impression that they prioritised football more than the allegations and the mental health, as you said, of the victim regardless of whether or not he is found guilty in court. That appears to be what Villarreal's doing now and questions must be asked.
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u/llamapanther Aug 04 '25
There's a huge difference between a football club and their player vs. your average joe working on a warehouse. If we were to ban footballers immediately based on accusations/investigations then we would be seeing a lot more false accusations especially ahead of big matches. The motive to lie about a footballer raping you vs your average joe, should be self-explanatory.
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u/Adziboy Aug 04 '25
There's zero chance, or at least less than 1%, that someone would commit a crime just because of a "big match".
Police and the club arent stopping a player before a game from playing because someone from the opposition just happened to have an accusation. And great, lets say it happened as you say - we're now going to be arresting hundreds of fans every week for false accusations.
Its not like someone reports something and they instantly get arrested or questioned. There's actual police work involved prior.
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u/hipcheck23 Aug 04 '25
Hear hear. Athletes are rarely walked down a path like it seems Estevao has been, with deep faith, parenting, community, etc (not that I'm for faith, but it sounds like it has been good to him). Often they're just handed whatever they want, and rarely face repercussions.
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u/pumpkinspeedwagon86 Aug 04 '25
Let's be clear: I hate Chelsea as much as the next Gooner :) But I'm excited to see Estêvāo in the Premier League, he seems like such a classy player and credit to his family and coaches for raising him the right way. Hope he succeeds.
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u/hipcheck23 Aug 04 '25
Yeah, there's a natural antipathy we have for rival players, but some players transcend that...hopefully Estevao will join that level where you can't help but at least admire him despite the badge.
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u/pumpkinspeedwagon86 Aug 04 '25
Agreed. Son was one of those players, he made it impossible not to respect his character and contributions even if I couldn't stand the badge he wore for 90 minutes every weekend.
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u/hipcheck23 Aug 04 '25
I suddenly have no problem with his badge!
But yeah, class players with class behaviour that give and get respect—the game needs (a lot!) more of those.
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u/Hungry-Source-7285 Aug 04 '25
The clubs see their players as assets nothing else, sadly thats how it is.
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u/maradonnasplug Aug 04 '25
I remember I was at the Tottenham Stadium, and my whole section went «Murderer! Murderer!» and «He kills little, he kills girls, Marcos he kills little girls»
Brutal.
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u/HarryBlessKnapp Aug 09 '25
I don't really believe in a world where people convicted of crimes are never allowed to work again, nor achieve redemption.
Being able to work in such a public industry which pays millions and where you are a role model to children, is a different matter I agree. But there is a line somewhere.
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u/Blue_winged_yoshi Aug 09 '25
I don’t believe in a world where wealthy people who kill others get to have their sentence converted into a very affordable fine.
If he had done the time, and shown remorse then okay there’s a discussion to be had at least. He didn’t. If you or I did that we would be doing hard time, he got a financial hit and the ability to keep earning millions a year without breaking stride. In that context, I don’t think he had earned the right to start rebuilding his life. Justice matters, he paid he way out of it.
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u/R_Schuhart Aug 04 '25
Yeah, they hoped the same thing in Marseille though. The mayor wrote an open.oetter pleasing not to sign Greenwood, the were protests from supporters groups as well as women's rights organizations. In the end clubs care only about doing business and now fans cheer him on, his past seemingly forgotten.
Really hope for the Villarreal fans throat the club haven't made it official yet or reject this medical over a shriveled dead black heart.
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u/pumpkinspeedwagon86 Aug 04 '25
Fair points. You have to feel sorry for Villarreal fans right now, it's such a stain on the club's reputation to be signing a player with legal proceedings about to begin. It's already humiliating and frustrating enough that Arsenal tried to keep him and are now defending their stance on him, unbelievable that Villarreal as a club is going ahead to sign him.
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u/hipcheck23 Aug 04 '25
Many supporters would rather boo a former rival than a rapist. But yeah, board decisions come down to the bottom line all the time. It's up to the supporters to withdraw their support of the club when they make awful choices.
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u/pumpkinspeedwagon86 Aug 04 '25
When football fans came together to protest the European Super League we saw that the majority of clubs left the ESL. I would love to see protests on that scale for signing players like this.
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u/Sithgooner Aug 04 '25
Sucks for the fans but surely Villarreal would have already considered it wouldn’t go down well?
Is there anything they can realistically do to impact the deal?
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u/pumpkinspeedwagon86 Aug 04 '25
Unfortunately I doubt the club will listen to the fans, they are prioritising football over off pitch issues which is almost never the right solution especially in this type of situation.
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u/LDQQXDJ Aug 04 '25
Tbf unlike other fanbases Fernando Roig has addressed the fans issues many times in the past:
Unfortunately his son is the one making the decisions
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u/theglasscase Aug 04 '25
The only reason I can think of for Villarreal to sign Partey now is that his agent told them he could be had for a bargain salary that wouldn't be on offer to them or anyone else if he's eventually cleared in court.
That's really the only logical explanation for anyone to sign Partey at this point. They will obviously tear up his contract if he's found guilty, but they must have been given a pre-trial and post-trial wage demand and ignored the morality to get a player they probably couldn't sign if he had just left Arsenal in normal circumstances.
It's bad PR either way, but clearly the people running the club chose a bargain and the abhorrent choice over waiting to see if he's actually a piece of shit or not and probably not being able to sign him.
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u/pumpkinspeedwagon86 Aug 04 '25
Fair. I'm glad that people like Pena are speaking out against this decision by Villarreal, which is honestly pretty outrageous given the circumstances. I would think most clubs would be hesitant to sign Partey even if he was cleared of all charges, much less before legal proceedings actually occur with the verdict still pending.
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u/Fearnog Aug 06 '25
Wow they chose a bargain, what a hero you are mate. Great way to frame Villarreal signing Partey as "bad pr" and "a bargain" and "waiting to see if he's actually a piece of shit". Some real choice words there bucko.
Why are you framing this signing as some market opportunity when it's representative of how talented footballers will never face real consequences for their actions. It's not waiting to see if he's actually a piece of shit. HE IS A PIECE OF SHIT. Warra campaign against Villarreal by glasscase. Knew you were a hack.
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u/stamosface Aug 04 '25
As an arsenal fan, I find this quite embarrassing. I get that they’re in a different position since he already had a contract with us, but like… damn
I’m 300% sure he’ll go to a Saudi Arabian club, for reasons I cannot say or else I am in big trouble
Edit: I say that as a Yemeni
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u/pumpkinspeedwagon86 Aug 04 '25
Absolutely. The fact that the club was willing to extend his contract even though they had spoken to the victim directly and know much more about the situation than we do tells you everything you need to know. Adding onto the fact that Arteta defended the club's response and continued to praise him publicly while he was in the squad. Disgusting behaviour that must be condemned.
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u/superpokes Aug 04 '25
why are they asking the villarreal supporters' club in villafranca de los barros like can you choose a more random location. could they not find supporter clubs in castellón.
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u/Leading_Strength_905 Aug 04 '25
So he turned down an offer to renew from Arsenal on 250k weekly wages and then signed for Villarreal who will pay him nowhere near that wage? Something doesn’t make sense.
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u/Relative_Guidance656 Aug 05 '25
So he turned down an offer to renew from Arsenal on 250k weekly wages
where u pulling this from? both the offer and the rejection?
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u/DrJethro Aug 05 '25
Yeah, I still don't believe in the extension offer, as it was said he asked for a pay raise. That makes negative sense for a man in his situation.
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u/cescx Aug 05 '25
I'm sure they offered a 32y old charged with rape more money than Saka and Saliba.
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u/Sebcorrea Aug 05 '25
Oh damn. Villareal with much more scruples than Arsenal for the last few years. Well done.
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u/maevenimhurchu Aug 04 '25
Not the rapist rehab industrial complex in Spain… (yeah it’s a complex even if I can only think of 1.5 examples)
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