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Our smiling assassin meets a real one...

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rurikbird

Part of the Furniture
Honorary Member
This is sickening... Stuff like this is exactly why awarding the World Cup to Russia was such an inexcusable decision. So far Egyptian FA referred all questions over how this was allowed to happen to FIFA, which so far refused to comment. No word from LFC yet, but I can't imagine Klopp or Henry and Werner will be happy their star has been used to legitimize a dictator and a killer.

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Mo Salah, Now Starring in Chechnya

He was apparently roused from sleep by the Chechen strongman Ramzan A. Kadyrov. Egypt’s World Cup training camp has begun.
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GROZNY, Russia — Ramzan A. Kadyrov did not sustain himself as the autocratic leader of the Chechen republic by failing to understand the value of propaganda and spectacle.
So he was not to be deterred when Egypt’s national soccer team arrived here at its World Cup training camp on Sunday, and the whole squad showed up for an evening workout — except for the star forward Mohamed Salah.
The bearded Mr. Kadyrov, 41, left the field in his turquoise and white track suit. Soon, he returned, this time making a grand entrance with Mr. Salah before about 8,000 fans, posing for photographers and television cameras, even grabbing the Liverpool star’s arm and raising it as if crowning a boxing champion.
Turko Daudov, a prominent adviser to Mr. Kadyrov, said Mr. Salah had been napping at the nearby team hotel and had been awakened and driven to the stadium in Mr. Kadyrov’s car.

Both the soccer star and the regional leader are in urgent need of their own forms of rehabilitation. Mr. Salah is attempting to heal his injured shoulder in time for Egypt’s opening World Cup match on Friday against Uruguay in Yekaterinburg.
Mr. Kadyrov is seeking a more elusive kind of rehab: repairing an image of ruthlessness and oppression as he seeks to draw more investors and tourists to this formerly war-ravaged capital in the North Caucasus region.
In recent years, he has convinced a parade of athletes and celebrities to come here to take his hand and his money. Sports like soccer, boxing and mixed martial arts serve as Mr. Kadyrov’s passions and attempts at international legitimacy, economic development, enhancing his cult of personality at home and extending his brand of macho nationalism.
“It’s all about a positive image of the Chechen Republic,” Jambulat Umarov, Chechnya’s minister of national policy, press and information, said of hosting Egypt’s training camp. “It’s about dispelling myths.”

So far, Mr. Kadyrov has struggled to burnish that image.
Chechnya was involved in two brutal separatist wars in the 1990s and early 2000s. Since then, Mr. Kadyrov, a former rebel whose powerful family aligned in 1999 with Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, has aggressively suppressed dissent.
Human Rights Watch called Egypt’s decision to train here “absolutely shocking and outrageous,” and it has called for the team to find a new base camp, saying that Mr. Kadyrov “exerts a ruthless grip on the region where extrajudicial killings, torture, enforced disappearances are common” and there is “near-total repression of critics, journalists and L.G.B.T. people.”
Last December, Mr. Kadyrov was added to a United States sanctions list over rights abuses. His Facebook and Instagram accounts, which had four million followers between them, were deactivated. Days later, in what some activists saw as retribution, Oyub Titiev, the Chechen head of a rights group called Memorial, was arrested, ostensibly on charges of possessing marijuana. (Drug charges are a favorite tactic for jailing critics here.) He faces a maximum prison term of 10 years.
Unable to persuade Egypt to train elsewhere, Human Rights Watch has been urging FIFA, soccer’s world governing body, to attempt to get Mr. Titiev freed. Otherwise, anyone with a complaint regarding a FIFA-related activity here — a stadium worker, hotel worker or a protester — will have no place to turn for redress, said Rachel Denber, deputy director for the Europe and Central Asia division of Human Rights Watch.
“FIFA really needs to step up and lean on Putin,” Ms. Denber said.
Last year, when informed about the detention and torture of about 100 gay men and continued harassment of journalists in Chechnya, FIFA noted that its policy on human rights “prohibited discrimination of any kind” and said of the abuses, “we firmly condemn them.”
Asked recently about the propriety of a World Cup team training in Chechnya, a FIFA communications representative said in an email, “Through its activities, FIFA does not legitimize any regimes.”
As Egypt’s team arrived near the end of the holy month of Ramadan, it found in Grozny comfort in a fellow Sunni Muslim region, convenient access to one of the largest mosques in Europe and halal food. But there are practical reasons for the team’s choice of a base, too: the players are staying in a new, five-star hotel with no other guests, and the stadium they are using for practices is only a five-minute walk from the hotel.
Ihab Leheta, the general manager of Egypt’s national team, declined to comment on the objections by Human Rights Watch, saying recently in Cairo: “We chose from the list FIFA gave us. If people have a problem with Grozny, they should speak to FIFA.”The Pharaohs, as Egypt’s team is known, have qualified for the World Cup for the first time in 28 years. Their hopes depend largely on Mr. Salah, who scored 44 goals for Liverpool during the 2017-18 season and was named the top player in England’s Premier League. He led his team to the Champions League final last month before injuring his shoulder early in that match against eventual champion Real Madrid.
If Mr. Salah can recover sufficiently, Egypt holds reasonable hope of advancing beyond the group stage of the World Cup after round-robin matches against Uruguay, Russia and Saudi Arabia.

This week, Egyptian national flags line the road from the airport to central Grozny. Billboards depict its players in celebration. The managers at the team hotel speak Arabic and English. Security, medical and firefighting personnel are on duty around the clock. Even traffic patterns have been adjusted to accommodate the team.
This lavish welcome is an attempt to show outsiders that Chechnya is politically and economically stable, Mr. Umarov, the minister, said, adding, “It shows that big stars who are famous worldwide feel safe in Chechnya.”
This is hardly the first time Mr. Kadyrov is making a theatrical attempt to ingratiate himself with the international sports world. In 2011, he coaxed the retired Argentine great Diego Maradona to play an exhibition match here in an effort to show that Chechnya had recovered from its wars.
According to various accounts, Mr. Kadyrov captained the other team and either scored a hat trick or assisted on numerous goals in a 5-2 victory against a defense that was generous to the point of deferential.
That same year, the actors Hilary Swank and Jean-Claude Van Damme were among a widely-criticized group of celebrities who attended a lavish 35th birthday celebration here for Mr. Kadyrov. Some of the celebrities were reported to have been paid as much as $500,000 for their presence. Last December, the boxing champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. visited Mr. Kadyrov and called him “my buddy.”
Mr. Kadyrov will seek similar public-relations benefits from Mr. Salah’s presence and will be thrilled if Mr. Salah expresses that Grozny is safe, developed and culturally pleasing, said Karim Zidan, a Canadian-based journalist who has written extensively about sports and politics in Chechnya.
At times when Mr. Kadyrov faces harsh criticism, Mr. Zidan said, “You can believe he’ll have some celebrities in or football matches or fights going on to distract his citizens and people around the world from taking notice.”
The outreach to the Muslim world is also an attempt by Mr. Kadyrov to make himself the leader of all of Russia’s estimated 20 million Muslims, to mixed results. His forays into soccer, for example, have been both ambitious and clumsy. He is a former president of the local soccer team, then known as F.C. Terek and, since last year, as F.C. Akhmad in honor of his father, Akhmad H. Kadyrov, a previous president of Chechnya who was assassinated in 2004.





 
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He's really getting into this Rangers thing.

Overweight. Check.
Tracksuit. Check.
Bad facial hair. Check.

the exact opposite of Brendan, the sexy bastard.
 
I think youre overthinking it Rurik.
If it was in the UK hed be shaking hands with May or Mogg or some other vile murdering cunts.
Just because my man uses a hatchet and not an RAF fighter.

Dont be so precious
 
I think youre overthinking it Rurik.
If it was in the UK hed be shaking hands with May or Mogg or some other vile murdering cunts.
Just because my man uses a hatchet and not an RAF fighter.

Dont be so precious

So for you there is no difference between Kadyrov and Theresa May? In that way of thinking, does anything mean anything anymore?
 
So for you there is no difference between Kadyrov and Theresa May? In that way of thinking, does anything mean anything anymore?
Aaaah now you are getting it. Welcome to the dark side.
*wraps Rurik in his leathery wing*
 
Kadyrov has form here, hes used plenty of sports stars to boost his public image. Particularly with combat sports which are very popular in Chechnya. Hes had PR opps with Mayweather, Ronaldinho, Maradonna and countless MMA fighters. Salah being an observant muslim is a particularly big coup for him.
 
Kadyrov has form here, hes used plenty of sports stars to boost his public image. Particularly with combat sports which are very popular in Chechnya. Hes had PR opps with Mayweather, Ronaldinho, Maradonna and countless MMA fighters. Salah being an observant muslim is a particularly big coup for him.
Ronaldinho vs Maradona fighting it out in a cage might be interesting.
 
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