Wembley Stadium is for sale. And as the BBC has reported, there is someone prepared to buy: “Fulham owner Shahid Khan has made an offer, thought to be worth £900m, to buy Wembley Stadium from the Football Association. It is understood Khan would pay £600m for the stadium and the FA will continue to run the Club Wembley hospitality business, valued at £300m. The FA board discussed the approach at a meeting on Thursday”.
So who is Shahid Khan? Well, as the Beeb has also told, “Pakistan-born Khan has a current net worth of $7.2bn (£5.2bn) and is the 217th richest person in the world, according to the 2018 Forbes rich list”. He already owns Fulham FC, as well as NFL side Jacksonville Jaguars. But, yes, he is one of those Scary Muslims (tm), and so today’s reporting has tried to hint at that, without crossing the Islamophobia line.
The Murdoch Times had merely referred to Khan as an “American tycoon”, while even more downmarket sister title the Sun has offered readers “THEY THINK IT’S Y’ALL OVER … £1bn NFL deal for iconic England HQ”. It has been left to the former Desmond titles to get sniffy, with the Express hinting “IS NOTHING SACRED?’ [Religious angle - geddit?!?] and the Daily Star sneering “A KICK IN THE [balls]”. The Star doesn’t do subtle.
But the greatest opportunity for spectator sport is not - yet - on the Wembley pitch, but the inevitable outrage of the far-right. Selling things is fine, but when it’s a Pakistani Muslim - oh dear, oh dear, the Wall Of Gammon (tm) isn’t going to take kindly to that.
And the wind-up value of the news was not slow to be realised, with Paul Evans kicking off with “By the sounds of it, the new owner of Wembley could be a Muslim. Just imagine the fit that'll give Tommy Robinson, Jayda Fransen & Paul Golding”. Gammon Points offered “Wembley's getting sold to a Muslim. We're not leaving the single market. Royal baby has a French name. A Muslim is the top scorer in football. Worst time to be a gammon since Prince Harry hooked up with a mixed race woman”. There was more.
“Shahid Khan, a Muslim, buying Wembley will wind all the right people up. I welcome these developments … Shahid Khan the Pakistani born Muslim billionaire owner of Jacksonville Jaguars and Fulham FC is purchasing Wembley Stadium from The FA. Go on my son!! Ohhh, Tommy Robinson’s vein is gonna pop when he reads this news. Will take my prayer mat to wembley next time … Just waiting for Tommy Robinson or Britain First to say Muslims at it again this time taking over Wembley stadium … A Pakistani Muslim owning Wembley would leave the EDL-types fuming and that would be FANTASTIC”.
Rahul Verma looks to have meant it when he asserted “The outrage of right wing papers (I won't link, it's the usual suspects) to Shahid Khan buying Wembley can be translated as 'A Pakistani Muslim invader is colonising our national stadium and the home of football’ … I bloody well hope he succeeds”. And one Tweeter captioned a photo of Stephen Yaxley Lennon, who styles himself Tommy Robinson, with “When you want to go to the England game but remember Wembley stadium is owned by a Pakistani Muslim”.
Shahid Khan must be a sound bloke. He’s already winding up all the right people.
5 comments:
Couldn't give a shit if Khan is a Muslim, Protestant, Jew, Catholic, Scientologist, Jehovah's Witness, Plymouth Bretheren, Hindu, Buddhist, Episcopalian, Pagan, Quaker or any of the other superstitious bullshit ludicrous rituals in the West or East.
But he IS a Yank oligarch. And that makes him a suited up spiv who's never done an honest day's work in his life.
Not, of course, that he'll ever be referred to as an oligarch. According to British mainstream media such specimens are only of Russian origin.
Why shouldn't it be sold to the Yanks?
After all, Canary Wharf is choc-full of Yank money launderers. Which makes Wembley dead handy for their "leisure" pursuits.
But why stop there? Why not sell it to Khan so he can dismantle it, rebuild it in Jacksonville and get the fuck out of Britain? In Jacksonville he can then play rounders and a stupid street-fight-in-motor-bike-helmets to his profiteering content.
"your money paid to build it" - just like the GPO phone network, the National Grid power network, most water mains and much of the railway infrastructure after 1948 - and the Express' view on that when it was sold off for a song was..........?
Anonymous 13:01
You really are a bigot. Religion is a subject you clearly know nothing about. Your ranting also has no relation to the article at hand. Either stay on topic or calm your hatred.
Spittle-flecked Anonymous 13.01
Could be worse, he could have been a cockney! Imagine!
PS I hope this doesn't distract you from the 'honest day's work' you're no doubt doing (in between diatribes).
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