Category Archives: wtf

There’s bad luck, there’s rotten luck and then there’s Rafa’s luck

I know every club goes through a spell of bad luck, bad decisions and injuries but I don’t remember seeing anything like this in the decade that I have followed football at *any* club. Exhibit A:

Liverpool XI Missing in Action from Fulham Away
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That’s 7 regular first team starters injured and 3, if not 4, regular subs out injured as well.

Add into the mix a defender returning from what seemed a serious injury (a defender that Rafa never really wanted in the first place but let’s not go there). A midfielder who caught flu after perhaps his best game in the red shirt against the biggest rivals and when he was finally starting to win the fans over. A striker who’s hardly trained all week. All 3 who probably wouldn’t have started if there were any realistic alternatives.

Now add a Ref who sees (and shows) red for seemingly no reason whatsoever and you have the perfect recipe for the most sickening final one-third of a game I’ve seen in a long, long time.

You don’t have to be a football pundit to see that these are extraordinary circumstances and to blame Rafa for this is so ridiculous, it isn’t even funny. Or maybe you have to be a Wheelan of a pundit to be so oblivious to the facts and spout whatever shit comes to your mind. If only they stopped to think before opening their mouth. Think? That would imply they had a brain, wouldn’t it. Well, like I said – let’s not go there.

Potato Potaato?

No donor to the (Bill) Clinton foundation has raised more persistent questions than Frank Giustra, a Canadian mining executive. Mr. Clinton and Mr. Giustra shared a midnight banquet in September 2005 with Kazakhstan’s authoritarian president, Nursultan A. Nazarbayev. Mr. Clinton praised Mr. Nazarbayev’s bid to head an international election-monitoring organization, undercutting American foreign policy and his wife’s sharp criticism of Kazakhstan’s human rights record.

Two days after the trip, Mr. Giustra’s company signed preliminary agreements giving it the right to buy into three uranium projects controlled by Kazakhstan. Spokesmen for both men said there was no connection between the trip and the deal. Months later, a foundation controlled by Mr. Giustra gave $31.3 million to the Clinton foundation, its largest known donation.

Source: NYT.

Politicians in the west play by the same set of rules as Indian schools then – a world where bribes go by the name of “donations”.