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MARTIN SAMUEL: Dubai's very own Del Boy, Sulaiman Al Fahim, has no quick fix at Portsmouth
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09.30.2009 |
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Sol Campbell may be a much-maligned figure right now, but one observation he offered on the changing face of football ownership made perfect sense. ‘When people have money things happen quickly,’ Campbell said. And they do.
Remember the day Sheik Mansour bought Manchester City? Robinho arrived that afternoon. The immediate aftermath of Roman Abramovich’s purchase of Chelsea was a whirl.
Campbell’s words do not in any way justify his personal circumstances because, in the case of Notts County, things have happened at a speed relative to the pace of League Two. But when employed more widely, their wisdom becomes clear. Campbell has hit the nail on the head, but with reference to his old club, Portsmouth.
Sulaiman Al Fahim, the new owner, is not a shy one. Prominent initially as the front man in the Manchester City takeover, his gauche boasts about buying Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi appalled the real owners, who were trying to portray their Abu Dhabi homeland as the classy alternative to upstart Dubai.
They wanted to be seen as serious businessmen, not wealthy interlopers throwing their money around, and Fahim was quietly removed from the project. ‘He was too Dubai,’ said one representative of the Mansour family. City have been trying to live down his moment in the sun ever since.
Fahim was also prominent when Piers Morgan made his ITV documentary about Dubai. He showed off his Lamborghini Murcielago, saying he paid $600,000 (£375,000) extra for the interior trimmings. He added that he bought the number plate 93 for $2million (£1.25m), to mark the year his wife graduated from college. Then there was a tour in his private jet.
‘I came to Dubai to find out if it is all it is cracked up to be and the answer, if you like sun and fun, glitz and glamour, is a resounding yes,’ said the impressed Morgan. No mention of how it came to be that way, though. No visit to Sonapur, the concrete shanty town, holding roughly 300,000 low-paid migrant workers, passports confiscated and stranded, toiling 14 hours daily in heat that can reach 55 degrees C, with no way out and no fare home.
The Indian consulate logged 971 deaths of its expatriate citizens working in Dubai’ s construction trade in 2005, the last year in which figures were recorded. This is Dubai, confidential.
On the surface, though, all is wonderful and glamorous, so when doubts were first expressed about the Fahim takeover at Portsmouth, Morgan sprang to the defence of his erstwhile tour guide. ‘The last time I saw Sulaiman he took me for a spin in his private jet over Dubai, then drove me around in his white, Versace-designed Lamborghini. The guy is so loaded his eyeballs are made of platinum,’ he told a concerned correspondent, who was a Portsmouth fan.
That endorsement was published on August 16, 2009, since when the Fahim administration has taken control at Fratton Park for £60m, but with evidence of platinum optics hardly forthcoming. Portsmouth had a busy time in the build-up to the transfer deadline, but not Abramovich busy. It was more like the way Del Boy used to approach an auction, coming out with a job lot of Russian army camcorders or lockable briefcases with the security code missing.
Paul Hart, the Portsmouth manager, never moved beyond the realms of the car boot sale to snap up Nadir Belhadj, Tommy Smith, Danny Webber, Mike Williamson, Hassan Yebda, Tal Ben Haim, Michael Brown, Jamie O’Hara and Kevin-Prince Boateng, the majority for substantially less than his owner claimed to have paid for a number plate, and some via the loan system.
It could be argued that time was tight and Portsmouth’s needs were great but, even so, there was better out there for a club whose owner was said to eschew rose-tinted spectacles for platinum vision
Read more:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-1216994/MARTIN-SAMUEL-Dubais-Del-Boy-Sulaiman-Al-Fahim-quick-fix-Portsmouth.html#ixzz0SZAtHwZs
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Source:www.dailymail.co.uk |
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