Manchester United fans on Wednesday paid muted respect to owner Malcolm Glazer, who has died at age 85, as deep resentment still lingers over his debt-laden takeover.
United fans staged mass protests and burnt season ticket forms when the American finally took over the club in 2005. Disgruntled supporters even set up a new club, called FC United of Manchester.
A popular chant heard at FC United games looked forward to Glazer’s passing, and although attitudes softened as the Premier League giants enjoyed one of their most successful spells, supporters remain angry about the club’s finances.
Manchester United Supporters’ Trust vice-chair Sean Bones said: “It would be inappropriate for me to make any comment about the death of Malcolm Glazer as I didn’t know him or his family personally.
“However, as a supporter, I am aware of the detrimental effect the Glazers have had on the football club and the huge debt that has been placed on Manchester United.
“Malcolm Glazer wasn’t a board member and his children are on the board, so I don’t think that situation changes much.”
Fans took to club forums to call for a respectful reaction.
One user on fan site RedCafe wrote: “say what you will ... but he presided over the most successful period in the clubs history”, while another urged fellow supporters to “keep it sensible”, saying the death was “bound to be a flashpoint for some fans”.
“I would hope most of our fans will be able to retain some level of civility, in spite of the general feeling towards what he and his family have done with regards to the clubs’ finances,” wrote one supporter, while another reflected on “a very strange year for our club.”
Others highlighted to Glazer’s successful partnership with Sir Alex Ferguson, the manager who was able to carry out his job with little boardroom interference.
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers owner had largely handed control of the club to his two sons, Joel and Avram, as his health deteriorated.
Despite winning five Premier League titles and a Champions League trophy during his reign, the club currently finds itself in desperate need of an overhaul after finishing seventh last season, the first without Ferguson.
Dutchman Louis van Gaal has been charged with overhauling the side, and is expected to make sweeping changes to the playing staff.
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NO OTHER LAND
Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal
Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
Rating: 3.5/5
The Birkin bag is made by Hermès.
It is named after actress and singer Jane Birkin
Noone from Hermès will go on record to say how much a new Birkin costs, how long one would have to wait to get one, and how many bags are actually made each year.
Brief scores:
Day 2
England: 277 & 19-0
West Indies: 154
Attacks on Egypt’s long rooted Copts
Egypt’s Copts belong to one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, with Mark the Evangelist credited with founding their church around 300 AD. Orthodox Christians account for the overwhelming majority of Christians in Egypt, with the rest mainly made up of Greek Orthodox, Catholics and Anglicans.
The community accounts for some 10 per cent of Egypt’s 100 million people, with the largest concentrations of Christians found in Cairo, Alexandria and the provinces of Minya and Assiut south of Cairo.
Egypt’s Christians have had a somewhat turbulent history in the Muslim majority Arab nation, with the community occasionally suffering outright persecution but generally living in peace with their Muslim compatriots. But radical Muslims who have first emerged in the 1970s have whipped up anti-Christian sentiments, something that has, in turn, led to an upsurge in attacks against their places of worship, church-linked facilities as well as their businesses and homes.
More recently, ISIS has vowed to go after the Christians, claiming responsibility for a series of attacks against churches packed with worshippers starting December 2016.
The discrimination many Christians complain about and the shift towards religious conservatism by many Egyptian Muslims over the last 50 years have forced hundreds of thousands of Christians to migrate, starting new lives in growing communities in places as far afield as Australia, Canada and the United States.
Here is a look at major attacks against Egypt's Coptic Christians in recent years:
November 2: Masked gunmen riding pickup trucks opened fire on three buses carrying pilgrims to the remote desert monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor south of Cairo, killing 7 and wounding about 20. IS claimed responsibility for the attack.
May 26, 2017: Masked militants riding in three all-terrain cars open fire on a bus carrying pilgrims on their way to the Monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor, killing 29 and wounding 22. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack.
April 2017: Twin attacks by suicide bombers hit churches in the coastal city of Alexandria and the Nile Delta city of Tanta. At least 43 people are killed and scores of worshippers injured in the Palm Sunday attack, which narrowly missed a ceremony presided over by Pope Tawadros II, spiritual leader of Egypt Orthodox Copts, in Alexandria's St. Mark's Cathedral. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks.
February 2017: Hundreds of Egyptian Christians flee their homes in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula, fearing attacks by ISIS. The group's North Sinai affiliate had killed at least seven Coptic Christians in the restive peninsula in less than a month.
December 2016: A bombing at a chapel adjacent to Egypt's main Coptic Christian cathedral in Cairo kills 30 people and wounds dozens during Sunday Mass in one of the deadliest attacks carried out against the religious minority in recent memory. ISIS claimed responsibility.
July 2016: Pope Tawadros II says that since 2013 there were 37 sectarian attacks on Christians in Egypt, nearly one incident a month. A Muslim mob stabs to death a 27-year-old Coptic Christian man, Fam Khalaf, in the central city of Minya over a personal feud.
May 2016: A Muslim mob ransacks and torches seven Christian homes in Minya after rumours spread that a Christian man had an affair with a Muslim woman. The elderly mother of the Christian man was stripped naked and dragged through a street by the mob.
New Year's Eve 2011: A bomb explodes in a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria as worshippers leave after a midnight mass, killing more than 20 people.
U19 WORLD CUP, WEST INDIES
UAE group fixtures (all in St Kitts)
- Saturday 15 January: UAE beat Canada by 49 runs
- Thursday 20 January: v England
- Saturday 22 January: v Bangladesh
UAE squad:
Alishan Sharafu (captain), Shival Bawa, Jash Giyanani, Sailles
Jaishankar, Nilansh Keswani, Aayan Khan, Punya Mehra, Ali Naseer, Ronak Panoly,
Dhruv Parashar, Vinayak Raghavan, Soorya Sathish, Aryansh Sharma, Adithya
Shetty, Kai Smith
