bizzbo said:Hey, there was a good debate, going on, as per. Even if all the talk about pumps and nozzles was getting a bit homo-erotic.
Time to go off on a tangent, and make a bold assertion:
Mourinho is no longer part of this argument in my opinion.
His name was in the papers at the beginning of March, but that story is nowhere to be seen now. I don't know if city spoke to him, his agents, I don't know if there was ever anything in it. But I can believe there might have been, even if city were only exploring their options and looking at contingencies...
Either way, I am utterly convinced there is no way he can be our manager now. I believe he blew it with his comments before the CSKA match.
He's been on the edge all season in Italy, everything has been conspiracy theories and corruption. He's been at war with 'the world'. But this jumped . I had wondered in the past how the Al-Nahyan's might view his general demeanour, but these comments comments seemed as though they might be a bit more significant to their view of him, in general terms. But on reading more, I start to see how the whole thing could have touched on some issues that are very close to home for them.
Let's start with Mourinho's general attitude since the turn of the year.
Referring to a controversial penalty awarded to Juventus:
'I don't stick my head in the sand, I know there is only one team (in Italy) that has a penalty area 25 metres (27 yards) long,' he jibed.
Remember his feuding with AC Milan Vice-President Adriano Galliani?
Galliani had fiercly criticised Mourinho for his conduct during and after the 0-0 draw against Sampdoria. Inter had two men sent off. Mourinho infamously made his 'handcuffs' gesture towards the Referee. He was fined heavily and recieved a three match touchline ban for repeatedly abusing match officials. Muntari and Cambiasso were given separate suspensions for their conduct. Inter refused to talk to the press. (sidenote: Mourinho's comments about 'missing england' came at the end of March, as his touchline ban expired, after a month of fierce criticism by the Italian Press)
On the 22nd of February, Galliani said :
The attitudes of some coaches are tantamount to an incitement to violence. We cannot continue like this. Mourinho should stop certain gestures.'
That's Galliani, Vice President of AC Milan. He answers to Berlusconi, who spoke very nicely about our owners after the Kaka bid failed. He is due to visit the Al-Nahyan family later this year. Galliani, Vice President of AC Milan, who this year struck a £51m sponsorship with Emirates.
But my belief is that inadvertently went too far when he stumbled into much bigger issues that are very real and present concerns for just about everybody apart from him.
March 29, 2010
<a class="postlink" href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8592190.stm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8592190.stm</a>
Chechen Suicide bombers kill 38 in Moscow .
At least 38 people were killed and more than 60 injured in two suicide bomb attacks on the Moscow Metro during the morning rush hour, officials say.
Female suicide bombers are believed to have carried out the attacks on trains that had stopped at two stations in the heart of the Russian capital.
No group has yet claimed responsibility for being behind the attacks.
But Russian security services believe the bombers are linked to militant groups in the North Caucasus region.
Past suicide bombings in the capital have been carried out by or blamed on Islamist rebels fighting for independence from Russia in Chechnya.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin cut short a visit to the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk and said a crime that was "terrible in its consequences and heinous in its manner" had been committed.
"I am confident that law enforcement bodies will spare no effort to track down and punish the criminals. Terrorists will be destroyed," he added.
President Dmitry Medvedev echoed his words after laying a wreath at the site of one of the attacks, saying: "They are animals. I have no doubt that we will find and destroy them all."
The first explosion tore through the second carriage of a train at 0756 (0356GMT), as it stood at central Lubyanka station waiting for morning rush hour commuters to board.
People were yelling like hell. Within about two minutes everything was covered in smoke
The station, on both the busy Sokolnicheskaya and Tagansko-Krasnopresnenskaya lines, lies beneath the headquarters of the Federal Security Service (FSB).
"I was moving up on the escalator when I heard a loud bang, a blast. A door near the passageway arched, was ripped out and a cloud of dust came down on the escalator," an eyewitness named Alexei told Rossiya 24 TV channel.
"People started running, panicking, falling on each other," he said.
The second blast at Park Kultury, which is six stops away from Lubyanka on the Sokolnicheskaya line, came at 0838 (0438 GMT). It struck at the back of the train as people were getting on board.
"I was in the middle of the train when somewhere in the first or second carriage there was a loud blast. I felt the vibrations reverberate through my body," one passenger told the RIA news agency.
"People were yelling like hell," he said. "There was a lot of smoke and within about two minutes everything was covered in smoke."
The security services said the bomb that went off at Lubyanka station had an equivalent force of up to 4kg of TNT, while the bomb at Park Kultury was equivalent to 1.5-2kg of TNT.
The devices - believed to have been made with the powerful explosive, hexogen, which is more commonly known as RDX - were filled with chipped iron rods and screws for shrapnel.
"The whole city is a mess, people are calling each other, the operators can't cope with such a huge number of calls at a time," said Olga, a BBC News website reader in Moscow. "Those who witnessed the tragedy can't get over the shock."
.........
President Medvedev asked officials to increase security on the public transport system nationwide.
"What was being done needs to be substantially strengthened," he said. "Look at this problem on the scale of the state, not only as it applies to a particular type of transport and a particular city."
You probably remember the story. You can bet this was big news in the UAE.
But then I realised, Chechen rebels were already a big story in the Emirates.
Exactly one year before the bombing in Moscow:
March 28, 2009
REUTERS - Dubai police accused a deputy prime minister of Chechnya of masterminding the assassination of former Chechen military commander Sulim Yamadayev in an underground car park.
The attack on Yamadayev, a foe of Kremlin-backed leader of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov, was carried out with a Russian-made gold-coloured handgun, police said, showing the media a picture of a weapon and a pair of black gloves.
Yamadayev was shot on March 28 in the car park of a luxury seaside apartment block in Dubai, one of seven emirates that make up the United Arab Emirates.
Russian analysts suggested his death removed one of the last remaining powerful opponents of Kadyrov's increasingly strong control over Chechnya. Kadyrov's spokesman has dismissed any suggestion that the killing was linked to the Chechen president.
"The leads in the case indicate that a top official in the Chechen government named Adam Delimkhanov, who is the deputy prime minister in Chechnya, is the mastermind behind Sulim Yamadayev's assassination," the Dubai police chief, Lieutenant General Dhahi Khalfan Tamim, told reporters on Sunday.
"The crime ... is 100 percent of Chechen making and it's an operation of settling accounts (among Chechens)," Tamim said.
Delimkhanov said the accusation was a "provocation".
"The Dubai police chief's statements ... aim to destabilise Chechen society," he told Russia's RIA news agency. "The (Dubai) police have failed to hold a professional investigation."
"I am ready to cooperate with police ... and answer concrete questions," said Delimkhanov, who is also a deputy of the State Duma lower house of Russia's parliament. "But I will also fight to bring them to justice for slander."
Police said they were holding two suspects in connection with the killing and would seek an international arrest warrant for four others, including Delimkhanov.
A Russian prosecutor, who declined to be named, told Itar-Tass news agency that, in line with the law, Russia would not hand over any suspects even if Moscow received extradition requests but added they could be tried in Russia if there was evidence of them being involved in a serious crime abroad.
Yamadayev was the fifth Chechen living abroad to be killed in the past six months.
Kadyrov, 32, has pleased the Kremlin by calming the restive and mostly Muslim province -- which fought two separatist wars against Moscow -- but human rights activists have expressed alarm at extrajudicial killings and forced Islamisation.
Once one of Chechnya's most powerful men, Yamadayev was a former rebel who switched sides and backed the Kremlin, becoming a decorated military leader.
He had challenged Kadyrov for control of local security forces until last year, when he was dismissed from command of an elite battalion and forced to flee.
Yamadayev fought against Russia in the first Chechen war of 1994-96, when Moscow suffered a humiliating defeat and had to pull out of the separatist southern province.
He became commander of the Vostok battalion, a unit of battle-hardened former rebels which local media said was linked to Russia's powerful military intelligence agency, the GRU.
On the 14th of April 2009 a Dubai court convicted two Chechen nationals for the murder.
Now, back to Jose. His Inter faced CSKA in the Champions League. In the pre match press conference, he was on 'top form', first remarking on the suspension of two CSKA players for a doping offence.
April 5, 2010
MILAN (AFP) - Inter Milan coach Jose Mourinho on Tuesday questioned CSKA Moscow's right to still be in the Champions League ahead of their quarter-final, first leg clash at the San Siro on Wednesday.
CSKA defenders Aleksei Berezutski and Sergei Ignashevich were both previsionally suspended after they tested positive for a banned substance following their group match away to Manchester United in November.
They were later found to have taken a cold medicine that had not been reported by the club's doctors and they were retroactively given one-game bans (which they had already served).
They were let off harsher punishment as UEFA accepted that club doctors had made a technical mistake.
But Mourinho questioned the legitimacy of the club's continued participation in the competition.
"There's something grey about CSKA's progress in the Champions League. If two players go to an anti-doping control and a substance is found that's not allowed in the Champions League, there's something grey," he said.
typical Mourinho, eh? got to love it, get stuck in Jose.
then the 'main event'. after the bombing on the 29th, CSKA's weekend match, the huge game against Zenit St Petersburg was postponed:
(AFP) Friday 2 April 2010
A Russian league match between CSKA Moscow and Zenit St. Petersburg, scheduled to take place on Saturday, has been postponed because there are not enough police officers to provide security at the match, Premier League bosses announced today.
Easter will be celebrated throughout the country this weekend and as a result the interior ministry have cancelled the match, stating that too many police officers would be on duty at religious events to be able to provide security at the game.
"Easter is an event which cannot be cancelled or postponed," interior ministry spokesman Oleg Elnikov said. He added that Moscow's police were on red alert after suicide bombers carried out attacks in the Moscow metro, killing 39 people, earlier this week.
Mourinho, must have smelt a rat. Maybe he knew CSKA means Central Sporting Club of the Army... indeed the army are the primary shareholders.
But he wasn't scared of the silly Russian army, oh no, he was in full flow, and waded in:
5 April 2010
"CSKA have already done something to win tomorrow (Tuesday). They didn't play Saturday," he said.
"They used a slightly sad excuse but they did it well. Of course they could just have told the truth.
"A few months ago I congratulated (Milan chief executive Adriano) Galliani, who did something we call an intelligent game.
"CSKA have done the same thing, they've done very well but they could just tell the truth."
Classic Mourinho? A slight misrepresentation of the facts as presented to us.... The Interior Ministry ordered the game cancelled so you can see how his mind was working. But CSKA were reported to have asked to play at a smaller ground so fewer police would have been needed.
Silly boy, he thought it was still about Galliani...
You want more? More than CSKA's military ownership, Medvedev being Putin's man, Putin being the quintessential army man, Medvedev who has aligned all power with the army and interior ministry (which was the target of the bombing)?
How about their opponents for the postponed game, Zenit St Petersburg. Who owns them? Gazprom.The largest extractor of natural gas in the world and the largest Russian company. Fourth Largest company in the world. Incredible story that's worth telling just for the sake of it. The biggest asset ever privatised, in all of history. Evaded tax and government control because Yeltsin's Prime Minister Cherdomyrdin, was appointed Chairman, heralding a period of illegal asset stripping on an genuinely unimaginable scale. Putin swept to power in 2000, on a promise to undo the oligarchs who were selling Russia's natural assets as private property. His first move was to fire Cherdomyrdin, and install, yep, you guessed it, Medvedev. Then the state took a controlling interest, which, paradoxically, increased scope for foreign investment. (As a side note, it was Gazprom that paid Abramovich 13b for Sibfnet in 2005) The big plan is for a huge pipeline that will pump trillions of gallons of gas from the siberian fields to western europe. and that pipe will go through bulgaria, before terminating in Italy. Their Italian partners in this deal are ENI, Italy's largest company. The Italian Government (read: Berlusconi) holds a 30% 'golden share' in ENI. The figures involved in this deal are astronomical.
I have to stop at this point. I could go further into the politics of fossil fuels, it's obvious that Abu-Dhabi are interested in all of this, but we're in danger of getting away from the central point. You get an idea of the scale here. The men who involved with these clubs are international figures. They are friends and associates of the men who own our club. They broker the biggest deals imaginable amongst themselves, and deal with the most serious geopolitical situations. The links are personal, but mostly economic and political. They use sport as a financial, social, political tool. Abu Dhabi have invested in the facilities for the Russian Olympics.
Despite the UAE being in very good standing with the West, with Russia, and just about everyone, Al-Qaeda still raise huge amounts of money there. Some of that money goes to the Islamic Rebels in Chechnya. If you squint, in the background to all of this, you can see Iran, their sponsorship of overseas terrorism, their diplomatic relations with Russia, their Neighbours, and the rest of the world. Their nuclear programme.
My view is that Mourinho blew it completely by confusing his importance in sport with importance in the wider world. Depending on your point of view, he indulged his egotistical paranoid fantasies, or he sought to make psychological capital out of the incident. Ignorant of, or unconcerned by the normal rules of tact, but crucially, for the sake of my argument, surely ignorant of the real power and responsibility of some real 'Big Men', Presidents and Prime Ministers.
Big men like Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai, Prime Minister of The UAE, who answers to the President, the brother of our very own Sheikh Mansour Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, himself Minister for Presidential Affairs. Both of whom, in an extraordinary coincidence, attended the Kremlin, exactly one year before the bombings, around the date of the murder of yamadayev), to meet Putin and Medvedev. And, naturally, the new chairman of Gazprom.
Mourinho's comments were borderline. They lacked decency in my opinion, he was concerned only with his own sense of persecution, or at best, gaining an edge in the psychological 'war'. We like to laugh at his paranoid outbursts, even think that it's an act. But I think he plays the role too well, I think he's lacking a real grasp of his place in the world. Who makes comments to suggest that he is the victim of a conspiracy, after 38 people have been blown to bits? Someone who is ignorant enough to wade into international relations without realising it. His comments weren't nearly enough to cause an international incident, but my point is simple.
Imagine the problems the Al-Nahyan family might face, if their most prominent employee had made those comments.
I'm stretching it here, but....
Imagine they went straight from a phone call with Putin regarding the bombings, or a security briefing, or whatever, and saw Mourinho's comments.
How do you think that would have gone down?
bizzbo, please consider that I'm Italian and I have many difficulties to read English ;=)