League Two Administration Rumours

Fair play in and off the pitch

Summer was a time when football took a break, to the relief of those who have more interesting things in life. These days, the beautiful game is, above all, a business for all seasons.

This summer we had the Copa America, the Fifa Women’s World Cup and the Fifa U-20 World Cup. Tours, training camps, challenge cups, sponsor tournaments; the list of events in search of advertising revenue and new markets seems endless. And then there is the player transfer market, a never-ending saga that keeps the fans surfing the internet in search of the latest rumours.

The in-word this summer is Anzhi. To be exact, it is Anzhi Makhachkala and it is no uttering from the latest Harry Potter book. Anzhi are a Russian premier league club founded just 10 years ago. The club is based in the capital of the Republic of Dagestan, some 2,000 kilometres from Moscow.

Anzhi had the guts (and the money) to make an indecent proposal to Samuel Eto’o, the four-time African Player of the Year and a three-time winner of the Champions League. The 30-year old Cameroonian footballer’s consent will earn him a net €20 million annually for the next three years. Eto’o’s pay is roughly twice the take-home pay of Lionel Messi, the Fifa Ballon d’Or for the last two years. Anzhi are fast becoming the New York Cosmos of Russia: Eto’o joins internationally-renowned players such as Roberto Carlos, Dzsudzsak and Zhirkhov. Since Makhachkala is not considered safe enough, Anzhi players live and train in Moscow and fly “home” for their home games.

Earlier this year, Anzhi were bought by Suleyman Kerimov, a billionaire who ranks 118th on the Forbes list of the world’s richest people. His personal fortune of about €5.5 billion is nearly the size of Dagestan’s gross domestic product. Mr Kerimov is not the only billionaire hooked on football. He joins the likes of the Agnellis and nouveau riche Silvio Berlusconi, Roman Abramovich and Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan.

NOW THAT IBB IS AN ELDER | get2central

It is good to have elders around. That is because they serve a purpose. The wise look out for them when they seem to be out of view. And to think Ibrahim Babangida thought he could hide  the day he clocked seventy years on earth. If he can, then Nigeria can. An impossible thing by any standard.  Trust Nigerians anyway. They trooped to the mansion of the man they fondly call IBB on the hills of Minna in Niger State. That shows how much IBB is part of the nation, a part of Nigerians. Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida (IBB) had his birthday bash on August 17th, 2011. Well, he didn’t really want the celebration to go the big way it did on that day. Some of the personalities that attended were bangers, so they caused an explosion of the celebration, and they had big words for IBB, even.  Some of are quotable quotes.  “He is a factor;  he has always been a factor, and to some he will always be a factor.” That was from Femi Fani Kayode, a former Minister of the Federal Republic.  IBB is a factor. If Fani-Kayode was not right on that, no one would be. What he said requires some dissecting at this time when the former president has arrived the age that undeniably qualifies him as an elder.  Here is a man that is older than Nigeria, not as old as the Nigerian army, but he is older than the  first military coup of 1966, that coup that changed the face of the country and brought it to this point. The claim hangs somewhere out there that IBB has been part of every successful coup in the country.  He held important positions throughout his military career, and he was the Chief of Army Staff and a member of the Supreme Military Council under the administration of Major General Muhammadu Buhari (1983-1985) until he overthrew his boss. He arrived power, smiling, almost a boyish grin, in the same month he clocked one more year with a military coup that relied on mid-level officers that he had silently and strategically positioned.

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