15 January, 2006

Sven falls for fake Sheikh in Dubai


England's football coach Sven Goran Eriksson has been busy in Dubai it seems, according to the News Of the World (was blocked at the tme of writing the post blocked by Etisalat unfortunately, it seems):
Sven Goran Eriksson is secretly preparing to DUMP England immediately after the World Cup, the News of the World can reveal. At a time when the Swede should be focused on vital team preparations, he tried to get an undercover News of the World investigator—posing as a rich Arab—to BUY Premiership club Aston Villa and give him the manager's job on a massive £5 million a year AFTER TAX, plus bonuses. Crafty Eriksson—who vowed to fans he would see out the last two years of his England contract—even discussed ways of wriggling out of the job behind the backs of his FA bosses.


And further into the story:
So our undercover Arab contacted Sven's portly agent Athole Still—who negotiated Eriksson's monster £8 million England contract—to see if he would be interested in coaching at a new football academy in Dubai.

We expected the answer to be no because of the pressures of getting England to the finals. Instead it was a very definite YES—and negotiations began.

On Wednesday night Sven, along with Still and lawyer Richard Des Voeux, flew from Heathrow to Dubai where they were put up in the luxurious Burj al-Arab. They met our Arab at the hotel's seafood restaurant. Sven was in a sharp suit and black tie.

By the end of the night the two had ordered and downed champagne along with two bottles of vintage wine costing £900.

Over crab cakes and lobster, they got down to business. Just under an hour into the meal, Eriksson raised the idea of buying a club with our Arab and his undercover associate.

10 comments:

CG said...

hilarious. I love it!!!

Anonymous said...

the site could be blocked in one of those etisalat servers or the site was down when the blogger posted it and thought it was blocked. but y is that confusing you?

flamin said...

hahahhaha kick-ass :P

samuraisam said...

it was, 7days even reported it, but i think they've unblocked it very recently, hence the confusion.

Magnus Nystedt said...

When I posted it, the News of the World homepage wasn't blocked, but the page with the story was blocked (and now it's not). Blocking seems to be a pretty arbitrary thing, as I would think most users in the UAE would know.

Perhaps I shouldn't have pointed out the block, but I thought it was a nice thing to do. If it's not blocked when you look at it, that's good ;-)

John B. Chilton said...

Could it be that so many have experienced blocks that they misattribute "page not found" reports as blocks - i.e., false positives? "Page not found" seems to have become more frequent in my surfing, but reloading almost always delivers the sought-after page.

snow white said...

Lead story of NOTW was blocked the week before last after a particularly classy story about Brit actress Sadie Frost and the Primrose Hill mob's antics. Thanks to a friend for PDFing and emailing to me!

secretdubai said...

No - way longer than that - it's been weeks if not months.

Anonymous said...

omg this story is about Sven and not Etisalat...

Magnus Nystedt said...

I think we have our answer:
http://83.111.90.119/emiratestoday/ArticleText.aspx?article=18_01_2006_006_010

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