Politics & Stuff

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As I been saying for a while when its Israel everyone protest but when it's another country no one gives much attention. 

Silence over Sudan: why do Manchester City’s owners get away with so much?

Two midweek matches in England had a backdrop of war and geopolitics, but only one drew large protests

Sheikh Mansour is thus implicated directly in a letter addressed this week to the British government by the MP for Islington North, Jeremy Corbyn. In this letter Corbyn repeats a conclusion already drawn by the UN and the US Department of State, that the UAE (and thereby the owner of Manchester City) is providing resources and support for ethnically targeted mass killings in Sudan so vicious they can be seen from space.

The UN has spoken of mass rape, ethnic massacres and the threat of widespread starvation. Piles of dead bodies and patches of blood are visible on satellite pictures. There are reports of the summary execution of 500 people in a maternity hospital.

 

This is not just another distant connection, a corporate war‑laundering scheme, a bank that owns a fund. It is literally the same people. Club owner. Government. Football match. Bodies. The choice is simple. You either care or you don’t.

The second game I went to his week was Aston Villa against Maccabi Tel Aviv. For all the talk of Nights of Shame this was a largely peaceful protest. The police did their job. Banning the Maccabi fans may have been a supra-football choice – come on, we’re not children; there’s a war going on – but it helped retain order.

Otherwise this was surely the most protested about single event in British sporting history. This is a good thing. It is obviously right to be concerned. I wrote in these pages a few weeks ago that Israel should not be taking part in international sport at all while blood is being spilled in Gaza, a standard that should be applied to anyone carrying out extreme acts of war.

And while you don’t have to agree with this, or see any relation to sport, if you care about one of these things and not the other, it is worth asking why.

 

Why does no one care that City are owned by Sheikh Mansour’s Abu Dhabi, that an area of Manchester has been literally rebranded as “Etihad”. Imagine the rage if Israel bought a Premier League club. It wouldn’t last five minutes.

 

As it stands, no one is banning Abu Dhabi from anything. It’s a home of fun. Frankie Boyle, for example, is consistently critical of Israel’s military actions, which is good and fine, but happy also to perform at something called the Laughter Factory in Dubai only this year because, well who knows?

 

Looking at this you start to suspect the only way for the people of Sudan to get any kind of leverage would be for Israel to start bombing them. Perhaps Israel should start hiring its services to beleaguered populations everywhere. Is your bloodshed failing to do numbers? Hire the IDF. Everyone hates us.

So why does no one care? Or rather, why does everyone care about one side of this picture? It should be noted there were some Sudanese protests before the Manchester City Women game last week, but not the organised groups seen protesting against other things. And nothing on Wednesday, no encampments, no banners, no graffiti, and zero mentions of this connection still in the mainstream media. There are some obvious reasons. First, ignorance. People just don’t make the connection, or know this thing is happening. It’s not presented on a daily basis. You can ignore it, or see it as someone else’s problem.

The other explanation is that there is a heavily codified set of beliefs out there that only faces one way. A lot of people simply despise Israel. Gravity points that way. The hive mind is powerful. So this is the issue. These massacres over here.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2025/nov/08/silence-over-sudan-manchester-city-owners-football