It’s not football they’re most adept at at the Etihad

“Massive,” repeated 400 times in the commentator’s opening remarks, would only give a taste of it — no, this is no time for understatement. It’s a time of truth, the first of which is Abu Dhabi still gets away with calling itself Manchester City, still gets away with a lot of things. They have been studied for some time in the context of financial fair play, the rules which broadly mean that clubs do not spend more than they earn – they must not indulge in what we call ‘financial doping’. That there have been investigations in Abu Dhabi is remarkable in itself, considering football executives, like sports administrators in general, have about as much appetite for questioning sources of mysterious wealth as they do their own Challenging appetites for big dinners for awarding major sporting events to places like Russia and Qatar.

Last week The mirror continued his important work by tracking the money that is flowing in torrential amounts from Abu Dhabi to the Etihad, and that is also flowing to the best lawyers known to man, lawyers who can ensure that The mirror Allegations will ultimately remain only a very
interesting to read. This sportswashing venture has been hugely successful – and “massive” is to say the least – although you wouldn’t need the services of a forensic accountant to realize their abuse of fair play. Put it this way: Mo Salah has been the best player in the world for at least two years, which means Liverpool are now expected to pay him something on the order of what Abu Dhabi could pay him. But for no-country owned Liverpool, £400,000-a-week for Mo could mean other standout players rightly argue they’re entitled to the stupid money too.

For a club owned by an ordinary, decent billionaire, like Pool’s John Henry, the problem isn’t that a great player has to be paid as much as he would get elsewhere, but the knock-on effect on our old friend, the ‘wage structure “. Does the Abu Dhabi team have a salary structure? Can we even say that without laughing out loud considering how much ‘sponsorship’ they receive from places not a million miles from Abu Dhabi?

All in all, her sportswear was one of the most amazingly successful exercises, considering the words ‘Abu Dhabi’ are now associated with the brilliant patterns of football that form in Pep Guardiola’s beautiful head, not so much that Death penalty for homosexuality and other such primitive indulgences. Likewise, Roman Abramovich had some unsavory associations when he became the most important man at Chelsea, an achievement that can now be seen as the model any serious sports washer must aspire to.

Abramovich didn’t get away with it until his boss actually began committing genocide on television and his closeness to Putin inevitably became clear. But what a thing it was to have this takeover of a club in the world’s most popular league, the world’s most popular game – placing this icon of modern Russia in an executive box in one of the most desirable locations in West London and speaking about the tastes of the Managers ponder formation while Putin pondered his cards. The power of the various sports washers comes from the same source. Russia and Abu Dhabi have oil, as has Saudi Arabia, which has now bought Newcastle United, convinced of the extravagant successes of their authoritarian brothers.

And of course Qatar, now counting down to November’s World Cup, has oil at a time when ‘the West’ lusts after it. This means that from now on we will talk less about human rights abuses and more about how major international sporting events can further draw “aspiring” regimes into the community of nations.

Yes, they keep popping up… Perhaps it was that false hope that convinced the likes of David Beckham and Idris Elba to bring their bonhomie to the 2022 World Cup draw recently. Although Becks has also been convinced of a £150m deal with Qatar over 10 years in an “ambassador” role that can “make meaningful positive changes”.

It would be another “significant positive change” if Abu Dhabi were beaten by Liverpool today. Apparently this is the only set of circumstances under which they can be beaten.

At least Le Pen is fighting for her terrible beliefs

I don’t want to alarm you – not when things are going so smoothly – but with the French presidential election looming this month we’re seeing headlines like: “The Rise and Rise of France’s Far Right Marine Le Pen”. A poll has put this Putin ally at 47 percent versus Macron’s 53 percent.

With Victor Orbán’s renewed win in Hungary last week reminding us of his “special relationship” with Putin, and France thinking of following the same path and taking a big chunk of the EU with it… that’s the game folks. An article about France in a generally liberal publication wrote that “political opponents continue to denounce Le Pen’s National Rally Party as racist, xenophobic, anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim”.

So it is “political opponents” who come to this verdict? You can’t just state as an indisputable fact that Le Pen’s party is racist, xenophobic, anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim, even though it tries hard to be all of these?

The presence of those four words, “political opponents still condemn,” tells us a lot about the rise of the far right. Like their soul mates in the sportswear business, they have identified these fundamental weaknesses of liberal democracy and bulldozed them. Trump and Johnson recognized that the kind of journalism practiced by White House and Westminster correspondents was never meant to deal with leaders who didn’t believe in lying continuously, with those lies dutifully laundered and aired on the prime evening news.

Some supposedly serious journalists don’t realize – even now – that this hydra-headed war has been going on for some time, and still cling to their old method of pretending that there are two sides to this story. That Le Pen’s misconduct can only be seen as a matter of opinion of her “political opponents”.

Indeed, perhaps the demonic energies driving Le Pen and other agents of chaos are part of their appeal to voters, who find that they are at least fighting for their horrible beliefs — while liberal Democrats can come across as mere commentators on their own destruction.

Here Ed, I have a solution to this copyright business

First time I heard Ed Sheeran’s think out loud I was shocked. “Our Lady, to my ears it contains the essence of Marvin Gaye Let’s do itI thought.

So I respect the fact that Ed won his copyright case last week shape of youwho says that in popular music “there are only so many notes and chords used” – that coincidences will happen.

But I have a solution – yes, there can be coincidences in the creation of a song, but when that song is completely finished and you find it has these disturbing echoes…regardless of your honorable intentions, you wouldn’t feel like an original artist how to tweak it something?

Happy to have that sorted out…