Very good - haha - best post of the day
Khaldoon's end of season interview | Pt 1 (p3) | Pt 2 (p12)
- Thread starter Gaz76
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Sorry no. Liverpool January 3rd, Newcastle January 29th.
Rehash of the same stuff written by Ronay a couple of weeks back. If all these "journalists" are so knowledgeable about the Middle East and geo politics how come they're all still stuck on the sports desk covering football. Surely Liew, Ronay, Delaney et al should be foreign affairs editors somewhere with their expertise?
They couldn't even cover tiddlywinks, the useless wankers.
Penfold the Duke
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We all know what you did there!! :-)
One can't be anything other than impressed by your insight.
If the UAE needs to meet non-Arabs diplomatically, he's always there.
Look at the table positioning. Directly facing the Vice Premier.
Here's another shot of a recent visit to China.
The guy in front is a Royal, the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi so walks first. Then it's Khaldoon.
This might seem a bit like the mental "body language" posts you see sometimes but in diplomatic circles, especially within Gulf nations, this sort of thing matters. Khaldoon is the Special Envoy to China, one of the biggest economies in the world.
Here he is facing the VP of the USA, he's American educated (which is where his English accent comes from).
When Trump announced that mad Board of Peace thing, who was on it?
I'll note that Sheikh Mansour is not in any of these images. These are somewhat cherrypicked, Sheikh Mansour is an important diplomat in the UAE structure but he's important because he's part of the Bani Fatima and (potentially) is being positioned as a future leader of the entire UAE. His stock has gone up in the last 10-20 years. But he's still the guy who is best served as part of the traditional Arab diplomacy between nations, gatekeeper to his brother the President. Khaldoon is the "fixer" for lack of a better term. He's not of Royal stock (ish) but his talents, family connections, acumen and demeanour have put him at the absolute apex of power in the UAE.
He will always defer to Sheikh Mansour, Sheikh Mohammed and the other brothers. That's his job, to implement their vision. Like a Chairman/CEO relationship in normal businesses, the job of the Chairman is to Chair the board and think of long term strategic goals and the job of the CEO is to manage the business day to day. Khaldoon could be considered the CEO of Abu Dhabi and possibly the UAE (with no disrespect to the Royals in this analogy because it's not that simple)
Khaldoon's Dad was the Ambassador to France when he was growing up and his Dad was murdered by terrorists in Paris when he was a child. There was (if you read analysis on the period) a real desire by the Al Nahyans to help the Al Mubarak family who were upper class in the tribal system to begin with. The UAE culture are very strong on looking after their own and that sort of incident brings a loyalty that is hard to really explain in words. It's not paternal, it's closer to what we might think of as community duty in our society a few decades ago. Like when you were growing up and a husband was locked up or was out of work or even worse, then the street used to invite their kids over for tea not because there was some big conversation but that everybody sort of understood in a unspoken ideal that that is something that would be helpful. It's not a perfect analogy due to the wealth involved, they weren't starving, it's just the best way I can describe it in Mancunian language.
This is the NYT report on Khaldoon's Dad being assassinated by a militant Palestinian group funded by Iran. So you can imagine the complexity of current stuff going on in the Middle East to him personally. There's conflicting reports on the family. It was first reported that the kids were in the UAE, then Khaldoon's Mum might have been there, then maybe it happened in front of the kids including Khaldoon. Most news coming out of these places is very difficult to get the facts about. Whichever way you look at it, somebody shot his Dad in the head, possibly in front of him, possibly not. But I feel like it's the type of thing that probably shapes your view on different value systems.
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69FACUPfinal
Well-Known Member
Oh my days, he was only 34. Even if the children weren't around losing a parent, in any circumstances at any age ( I think Khaldoon born circa 1976) so he would be around 8 at the time. Such a loss at any early age has a profound impact. I speak from experience ( although my parent didn't pass in such horrible circumstances ).
This is the NYT report on Khaldoon's Dad being assassinated by a militant Palestinian group funded by Iran. So you can imagine the complexity of current stuff going on in the Middle East to him personally. There's conflicting reports on the family. It was first reported that the kids were in the UAE, then Khaldoon's Mum might have been there, then maybe it happened in front of the kids including Khaldoon. Most news coming out of these places is very difficult to get the facts about. Whichever way you look at it, somebody shot his Dad in the head, possibly in front of him, possibly not. But I feel like it's the type of thing that probably shapes your view on different value systems.
He really is a wonderful man. Kudos to him.
Khaldoon was 8 when his Dad was shot in the head. Nobody knows if it was in front of him due to conflicting reports, but either way, it's not nice.
There was one report (importantly, it's one report amongst hundreds so is probably not true), that his brother watched his Dad die and Khaldoon was in the house.
I think that's a good point that a lot have missed. How many chairmen bother to do an interview at all? He's no doubt extremely busy and doesn't have to do it so it means a lot to me as a fan that he does. Of course it's stage managed, so is every other interview. What do you expect him to say?
Incidentally why is anybody bothered about the 115? Those who need to know will know the result, how it's gone and if it had gone the wrong way Masters would be shouting it from the rooftops. Probably on TalkShite.
I don't know how many times I have to say this, it's as if nobody noticed, but the reason for the decline last season was due to the serious injury crisis which no club can possibly leglislate for. Most clubs would struggle with just 2 or 3 key injuries. We had 13 at one point.
This season was partly a hangover from that, it skewed everything and you can't just dust yourself down and carry on like nothing has happened. We probably signed players to fill the gaps that we didn't originally intend to sign, we would have had to move quickly and not given all those signings the due diligence they would have normally got. That aside, when you lose several top players there's bound to be a drop off. Players of the level of KdB for example don't come around every day, and those that are out there are mostly already at top clubs.
Pretty sure the "Not taken £1 out" was a sly dig at you know who.
BobKowalski
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There was also mental fatigue coupled with the physical injuries. Once we did four in a row there was next to nothing left in the tank. I think that showed in the FA cup loss in ‘24. Players, coaching staff, Pep, all climbed one mountain too many and the drop off was inevitable. The injuries and an aging squad compounded the problem.
ashleycaulcott1
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Strange his comments on no intention to sell, surprised the conspiracy theorists weren't all over that
And then you get this view from the swamp…
Myopic, biased and unrelated to factual reality, copium
Protein Junkie
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Just someday putting his wishes on paper. He may as well scribe to Father Christmas.
The Light Was Yellow Sir
Well-Known Member
“Investment in infrastructure is not a cost”. If only someone in UK politics understood that basic truth, we’d likely all be a lot better off…
cleavers
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Only a UAE "official" in fact ;-)