The inevitable is no less disappointing

As I was typing this, I saw highlights of Argentina's 4-0 win over Perú in the Copa América, and it made me sad. Carlos Tévez, wearing No. 11 for Argentina, was all over the highlights, even though he didn't score a goal himself. He set up one and he narrowly missed scoring a pair of his own. One was on a diving header; it was amazing that he even got to the ball. The other shot, which hit the crossbar, came after a stop-starting run through the left-center of the Perú defense. Oh, and just for good measure, after a save on a point-blank chance set up by Tévez, Javier Mascherano scored on the rebound.

Of course, this all makes me sad because Tévez's transfer to Manchester United is all but certain, according to Man U manager Sir Alex Ferguson. The Independent, however, is not so sure. The paper reports that the Premier League's insistence that the transfer come through West Ham, which holds Tévez's registration, is holding things up. The BBC reports that the Premier League will insist that West Ham will have to keep "a chunk" of the transfer fee to underline the club's assertion that its agreements with the owners of Tévez's economic rights, Kia Joorabchian and two companies linked to him, were canceled by the club.

The Premier League is being a tad unreasonable here. West Ham breached their agreement with Joorabchian to end their breach of the Premier League rule on third-party influence over a player. That doesn't mean that Joorabchian's rights go away. It just means that West Ham have to find another way to satisfy Joorabchian. And because this is mostly about how much money Joorabchian can earn from selling Tévez, money will do just fine instead of the specific performance of giving Joorabchian the right to sell Tévez when and to where Joorabchian wants. West Ham claim to have the registration to Tévez, but do not claim to own his rights in full the way they do, say, Mark Noble. You would think that the Premier League would be eager to avoid seeing one of its members taken to court by an agent.