Does anyone subscribe to The Times Online?

A colleague copied it for me:

You might think you know the football chairman. Sharp suit, big pockets, inflatable ego and enduring self-love have made them a reviled bunch. The one at Hull City defies these clichés and tells you the truth about real dictators.
The rise of Hull was born out of the Six-Day War in 1967. In its aftermath, a young auditor at the Ministry of Finance in Egypt began speaking out against the Colonel Nasser regime. “One night they collected me from my home,” Assem Allam said. “I was lucky because after the ’67 defeat Nasser was a bit broken. He changed his policy to harsh, quick torture and release after three days. Before then people were arrested and you would not hear of them for years. I faced a wall with my naked body and was lashed. I needed stitches but was not allowed to go to the doctors, so the injuries were worse and the marks stayed for two years. My family felt I had to leave the country.” From hell and back to Hull.
It was the start of a link with his homeland that led to Hull signing three Egyptians on loan as the transfer window closed in January. The highest profile of the trio was Mohamed Nagy, aka Gedo, who promptly scored three goals and inspired the sale of fezzes for £5 at the KC Stadium.
Gedo and Ahmed Fathi came from Al Ahly, the biggest club in Egypt and one ravaged by last year’s Port Said disaster, which left 74 fans dead after horrific gun and knife violence.
The Ahly players witnessed deaths first-hand as bleeding fans were carried into the changing rooms. One player, Mohamed Aboutrika, held a supporter in his arms as he died. The league was suspended for a year. In January, 21 fans of the al-Masry club were sentenced to death for their role in the attacks. That sparked more killings. The league resumed last month but it is easy to understand why Gedo, Fathi and Ahmed Elmohamady, their compatriot who had been at Sunderland, were happy to be out of Africa.
Allam is 73 and committed to paying back the city of Hull for what it did for him, but he is also glad to foster links with Al Ahly, the club he supported as a boy. “After the Port Said disaster I wrote to Al Ahly saying we were prepared to hold a friendly match,” Allam said. “I said I would pay for them to travel to Hull and they would get the money from the game. That began good relations. We were the only English football club to offer that — only one other club, from Spain, offered. That created a special relationship.”
In December he travelled to Egypt and went on national television to discuss ways of co-operating. He broached the idea of loans. “The club refused at the beginning,” he said. “No club wants to loan its best players.”
But the domestic league was still in hiatus and he applied some pressure. “A week after they came here, the Egyptian League went back but without any fans,” he said. “Players cannot play without fans.”
Does he hope that there will be more loan signings in the future? “I hope so,” he said. He rattles off the statistics to prove their worth — “Gedo had 75 caps, top scorer in Africa, three golden boots; Fathi 93 caps, started playing international football when he was 16.” Nevertheless, he had to call in some favours to push through the deals and beat the deadline. “They qualified for work permits but the visa takes ten days,” he said. “I used my friend, the British ambassador in Cairo, and ten days became three hours.”
Allam points out the signings were manager Steve Bruce’s decisions. He merely alerted him to their potential availability. His own story sounds almost apocryphal and for Hull fans it must seem too good to be true. It was only 2010 when the club were at risk of going under and Allam stepped in. This was four decades on from when he arrived with nothing.
“I sold all my assets and bought dollars from the black market,” he said. “I came here and put the money in the bank. They rang back and said it was fake. Every dollar. I could not complain because it was illegal.”
Yet he went into business and, at the last reckoning, was worth almost as much as the Queen, but he says he is not in football for money and seems genuinely philanthropic. “When” — his word — Hull get into the Barclays Premier League — they are joint second in the npower Championship — he is adamant that the ship will not sink again.
Unlike the previous regime, he says that all contracts now carry promotion and relegation clauses, thus avoiding the situation where a Hull player earned £28,000 a week in the Championship after the last fall.
“We have done lot of work to spring-clean the club,” Allam said. “Some clubs pay massive money to remain number one, two, three. Others are happy to provide good Premier League football. Swansea are a good example of how to run a club.”
Now rooted to Humberside, he is saddened by the situation in Egypt, and is as forthright in his views about the ruling Muslim Brotherhood as he was about Nasser. “I am dead against military dictators but also against anyone using religion to gain power,” he said.
In Egypt, sport can be a matter of life and death. For Allam it is paying back the community that made him, whether it be by bringing the Allam British Open Squash Championships to his adopted home or saving Hull City with a £43 million thank-you note.

 

Reminds me of John Terry's story about being stuck on a grounded plane in Russia. It only took a 30-second Abramovich phone-call for them to get moving...

 

It's all about being in the know

 

Israel IS the enemy!

 

Living up to your name again I see.