I'M OUTRAGED

I am outraged, really outraged. This morning I woke up and I found a message from a friend saying that he had seen an old blog of my own ("Pensant sobre futbol", "Thinking about football"), in which I spoke about building up a style of playing, copied, point by point, on the website of a regional federation of Australia.

When I could, I have gone to check it and, my surprise has been a major one. It was a simple "copy and paste". Not even corrected the grammar and spelling errors. Not that. The saddest thing is that there was no mention of the source. Yes, there were sentence from Mourinho or Guilherme Oliveira whom mention was made.

What’s that? That I'm not famous or well known and there’s no need to quote me? Only the "cracks" can do good things? Because obviously, the document in question is a normal document. Is the "Technical Development Plan" of the federation. For the avoidance of doubt, the federation is the "Football NSW Southern Branch" of Australia and the responsible for this invention, Mr. James Muir. I contacted them, of course, asking for explanations about the fact and that's the answer I received:

" Hi Jordi,

Thank you for your e-mail.

The technical document is a draft document just for our local club coaches to help them with their teams and is not being sold or for profit. The document was not meant to be put online and was just for discussion and to show how we are trying to plan our club philosophy with content coming from a wide range of sources that is in line with Australia’s National Curriculum.

We do use Academy Soccer Coaches as well as other programs such as Soccer Tutor.

Once we get sufficient feedback we will acknowledge all sources and will not be using any original material, as this is just meant to start discussion.

I apologise for any inconvenience and have asked for it to be taken down.

Regards"

Fair enough, but I wonder: If it doesn’t have to be on-line, why is it? If it is a starting point for discussion, why not quote the author as it’s done with others? Could it be because, as I said, I'm not famous or known and no one will find the origin of the document? Why? Why? Why?

Make it clear that, from the moment that I have a blog on the internet is to share ideas and knowledge. So, I'm not worried, instead, thank you to the people who like my stuff, because it means that I don’t do it so badly. I, like everyone, take stuff from other blogs and websites for my work. Clubs, coaches and football lovers. Now, to copy 24 straight pages without mentioning the source and post it on the web it seems too much.

But it is what I said before. Since I'm not known, nor train neither trained at any “big” team I guess they think that they can act with impunity. At the end of the day, they think that no one will believe this person if he ever says he is the author of this writing.

And so, I am outraged.

Jordi Pascual

You can follow me on Twitter: @JordiPascualP