United v City - the Munich tribute

[Shaggy]

The 2nd article is particularly interesting...


City warn trouble-makers
Chris Bailey
5/ 2/2008

CITY fans who break the minute's silence at this weekend's derby are risking life-time bans.

Both the club and the Official Supporters Club have said that they will not tolerate any disruption of the 50th anniversary tribute to those who died in the Munich tragedy.

The Blues OSC has twice tried to persuade United to change their arrangements for Sunday - first suggesting a minute's applause as an alternative to the silence and then asking if the silence could be moved to the end of the match.

Both times they were met with a polite `no' by the Reds, but will now plead with members to observe the silence.

"We have held an executive meeting and passed a motion that any member of the OSC that is found disrupting the minute's silence will be subject to disciplinary action that could lead to a life ban," said OSC general secretary, Kevin Parker.

The club are of a similar mind and already pointed out that there are fans currently banned from Eastlands for having made derogatory `Munich' chants.

City have promised to work closely with the OSC and United to identify any trouble makers.

The club will have their own stewards at the game and will study close circuit and national television pictures, should it be necessary, to identify culprits. They may also be able to track down any silence-breakers through their seat numbers.

Reds and Blues officials have already worked closely over arrangements for the derby. City's shirt sponsors and manufacturer Thomas Cook. com and Le Coq Sportive have agreed their branding should be removed from the kit that will incorporate a black ribbon.

Every one of the 3,000 City fans who have received a ticket for the match has been given a letter from boss Sven-Goran Eriksson and skipper Richard Dunne as well as a picture of Frank Swift, the legendary Blues goalkeeper who also died in the crash.

"We ask that all supporters uphold the good name of Manchester City and respectfully support the commemorations, which will also be attended by the friends and family of the victims including Frank Swift's family," said part of Eriksson's letter.

The initiative is backed by the OSC and Centenary Supporters Association. United have given City permission to decorate the away end concourses at Old Trafford with Swift memorabilia.

_______________________________________

This is taken from MVICTA but seems to sum the situation up perfectly.



For those who are about to sing about plane crashes during the minutes silence... Ok I'm prepared to do a deal with the devil on this matter.

No amount of Munich chanting can denigrate the memory of the 23 who dies in 1958 as has already been achieved by the Man United PLC/Corporation who have milked the tragic episode in history for all its commercial worth and taken the MU franchise into such sanctimonious elevation that is way above the stratosphere and is now damaging the ozone layer.

The trouble is that all the media think (or WANT to think) is that the morons from Liverpool, Leeds or Man City who do chant are making fun of the dead. I can't speak for Liverpool or Leeds fans but City fans we know that the chanting has to do with the tasteless manner in which the club, corporation, PLC, franchise (delete which is applicable) has profited in terms of PR sympathy from the tragedy for 50 years and canonized the organisation into sainthood.

However the American Insurance Group (AIG) sponsored silence will be observed by me and probably 2975 of the 3000 city fans allowed entrance. One persons mobile goes off and it will be heard, 25 or so idiots will chant and we will all be tarred and feathered by the same brush and we will all be turned into monsters in the media forever, we will be painted as Fred West, Harold Shipman, Peter Sutcliffe, Ian Huntly, Al Queda, Bader Meinhoff, Hitler, Pinochet, Pol Pot, Mugabe, Stalin, Myra Hundley and Ian Brady embodied as fans besmirching the sadly departed 23. That's what we will all be seen as...

United will win the PR battle; they are playing with a double headed coin.

Outcome A: All 3000 remain silent.

Then United were right to hold out for the silence as everyone has behaved in a well orchestrated AIG sponsored moment: United win !

Outcome B: 25 fans (The Scum25) start singing "who's that dying on the runway" and making plane gestures with their arms.

Then we're all the bad guys but United fans are wonderful: United win !

The 25 or so retards are thinking that "it's our day to be heard". No one listens to these pathetic specimen of human kind in any walk of life but for that afternoon in Feb 2008 they will be given the oxygen of publicity for their miserable existence and the spotlight will be on them. Their picture in the MEN or Channel M of the Scum 25 will be their badge of honour; it will be their 15 seconds of fame. The trouble is the media don't know nor do they want to know the back story of the chanting, the bit that was airbrushed out of the recent movie€¦

Here is my deal on the table to the Scum 25. What I want from the deal!

I want one thing: Observe the (AIG sponsored) minute silence

Here is the Scum Bags coping strategy:- Think of Frank Swift. Remember Matt Busby played for Man City in the 1930's. Think of the three united players whose contracts were terminated when they returned injured (not dead) from Munich and never played again and were cast out by the club. One died in poverty as a baker working 18 hours a day, one had to sell his medals to pay for home help and one was told by Matt Busby that he was no longer welcome at United, the club needs to move on. The three (Albert Scanlon, Johnnie Berry, Jackie Blanchflower) Think of these three as their sad lives are chronicled in the book "The Lost Babes" rejected and ignored by United as they "got in the way" of the phenomenal Phoenix from the Ashes story and win the European Cup in 1968.

One of the players returned to Manchester and looked for work and while injured the taxi drivers of Manchester gave him free rides around the City (by both red and blue cab drivers). This was a gift from the cab drivers such was the unity of Manchester at the time. The club told him that he can no longer of the free rides, they were so convinced they were paying the bill. They weren't but such was their supreme arrogance and hubris on the matter they had convinced themselves it was coming out of their coffers.

It is probably too much for the Scum 25 to think of those who sadly died but the above is a good enough list to keep their vile trap shut for 60 seconds.

Also think how much the tasteless chanting will try to spur on Man United to win. We don't need that.

We need 3 points we need to go to Europe, we need to win at OT. Time for tide to change, time for people to know the truth, 50 years is long enough, the world needs to know the background story that has been swept under the carpet.

Think of the fact that AIG own Ocean Finance, like those companies who charge double digit interest rates, who loan desperate people £20k and make them pay back £150k over ten years and then re-possess their homes when they miss a payment

Think of the fact that United's interest payments are £60million a year and their profits last year were a similar amount. Think of the irony of that story where the entire profit of the club is wiped out with interest payments that are way above market rates and then think of the fact that the head sponsor owns Ocean Finance. Think that Ocean Finance HQ is in Croydon, South London€¦

Like I said I only want one thing from the deal: absolute silence between the two whistles.

What do the scum 25 get from the deal! You have my permission (albeit reluctantly) to sing what ever you like for the rest of the day;

Whatever your tiny, miniscule, retarded mind can think of, sing for all your worth after the whistle denoting the end of 60 seconds because it will be drowned out by Blue Moon.

Please, I've done my bit to show you how to keep quiet and think about the other things.

For the intelligent people who read McVittee this probably seems over the top but don't forget we are dealing with people (scum) with single digit IQ's and the inability to simultaneously breathe and walk.

We now live in a society where a father of three is murdered in the street for asking some lads not to scratch cars and a man was killed with a hatchet in his head with an argument over a football landing in the garden so asking losers of the highest magnitude to keep quiet is possibly too much to ask.

So it is for the lowest common denominator in society we appeal to. After all 95% of people behave, but we have 5% of the population who do not and as a result we have police, courts, prosecution service, prisons, probation teams, defence lawyers, legal aid and asbos. A whole industry in society because the minority can't behave and respect the law.

So if you are going to the game and know someone who thinks they will chant and you find it impossible to appeal to their better nature, common sense or reasoning then try one of the coping strategies.

Reluctantly this is the deal on the table, I wish it were different but it ain't.

Already the lazy drunk hack lazy journalists have written their copy and filed it for the Monday after the match, already we are toast in their eyes, they have already trialled us in the media, after all why let the truth spoil a good story.

I wish United were playing Portsmouth that day and we were away at Middlesboro miles away. These tw*ts will make us look awful and paint United as the poor club that needs another 50 years of sympathy.

If only there was a journalist out there to tackle the elephant in the room but they get paid to grovel in front of the high altar that is Manchester United and their continuous glory.

[MARTINOZ]

He really summed up the way the scum get treated by the press. Hope they do keep their mouths shut. It may be the scum, and they are as bad as anyone for going over the top with chanting and the rest, but we are still talking about young people losing their lives.

[Tee]

Second article is an excellent read. Shocked to see the treatment, or should that be mis-treatment, by United of some of those survivors.

[tommyg]

i like the idea of a minute's applause

[The Erectile Banana]

Second article is an excellent read. Shocked to see the treatment, or should that be mis-treatment, by United of some of those survivors.

It is shocking. I never realised that some of their players were treated so badly.

You'd expect the club to look after them after a tragedy like that not discard them so cruelly.

[jonesie]

I feel sorry for City. It's sadly obvious that some dickheads will ruin the minute's silence, and they'll all get tarred with the same brush, just as we would if we were playing them. I don't think this is the time to go on about how Man Utd are treated in the media though, although that book 'The Lost Babes' sounds interesting.

50 years ago today. RIP.

[PTP]

i posted this somewhere else

interesting read

f he closes his eyes, he can still see their smiling faces... those carefree young men with the world at their feet.

But that was 50 years ago. Today, as he queues at the turnstiles, Albert Scanlon looks like any other fan along to see his beloved Manchester United.

None of his fellow supporters realise this shuffling pensioner is a man who played a part in one of the defining days in the club's history.

A day that, in its poignant tragedy, helped establish Man Utd as the biggest football club in the world.

Albert was one of the Busby Babes, the talented young team which, under manager Matt Busby, was poised to become one of the best ever seen - until that dreadful day, February 6, 1958.

Eight of the team were among the 23 who died as the plane flying United back from a European game crashed in heavy snow on take-off from Munich airport.

Today, only five of the players who survived are still alive to remember.

"I can sit and reminisce about them for hours," Albert, 72, says. "It's easy for me to conjure up the ghosts.

"I see their faces - still young men's faces - and I go through them one by one, weighing up their talents and their skills.

"Roger Byrne, Eddie Colman, Dave Pegg, the great Duncan Edwards... I pick a team from them for an imaginary game, just as if they were alive today.

That's how I deal with the memories."

A regular in the side, Albert played in the ill-fated game in Belgrade, the second leg of a European Cup quarterfinal against local team Red Star.

The team drew 3-3 in the Yugoslav capital. It meant they had made it through to the semi-finals on aggregate and they were in high spirits.

Albert says the journey from Belgrade to Munich had been a good one, with the squad playing cards and chatting happily to the journalists travelling with them.

But, while on the tarmac at Munich, the snow worsened and temperatures fell. Albert remembers the first two attempts at take-off, when the plane taxied on to the runway, gathered speed - and then braked to a sudden halt.

By the third attempt, the mood was tense and silent, and the card schools had been put away.

The British European Airways plane crashed at the end of the runway, ploughing through the airport perimeter fence and into a house.

Albert was knocked unconscious and thrown clear of the wreckage. He was found under one of the wheels, with a fractured skull and a broken leg.

"I don't remember much other than going up the runway. The next thing I was in hospital holding the hand of a nurse - and I was swearing.

"Then, I remember waking up and there was a Sister Almunder, who was one of the nurses looking after me. She joked, 'Ah, Mr Scanlon, it's nice you've decided to join us... you've been here six days'.

"I'd no idea what had happened or the lads that had died. An Australian priest, Father O'Hagan came and told us about the other lads... that was it."

The full horror of the crash began to sink in as Scanlon started to make his way around the hospital in a wheelchair.

"Sister Almunder wheeled me round to see the other lads but some of them, like Johnny Berry and Jackie Blanchflower, were too ill to talk," he adds. "I also looked in on the boss, Matt Busby, he was in an oxygen tent and was in a mess.

"Then there was Duncan Edwards, sitting up in bed. He was shouting about wanting to get up to play, but the reality was he was in such a bad way he eventually died."

Amazingly, Albert recovered enough to play another season with United. But he was never the same player. His speed - his greatest asset - was gone and, after spells at Newcastle and Mansfield Town, he retired from the game.

On Wednesday, 50 years to the day since the Munich air disaster, Albert will join fellow survivors Sir Bobby Charlton, Kenny Morgans, Harry Gregg and Bill Foulkes for an emotional anniversary memorial.

With them will be 500 fans, the current Man Utd management and the stars of today's side, including Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney.

These players live a life a world away from the likes of Albert and the rest of the Busby Babes. At the height of his stardom, Albert earned £12 a week. After he finished his career, he went labouring on the docks, ending his working life as a factory nigh****chman.

Yet he doesn't begrudge today's stars, who earn tens of thousands every week.

"I know plenty of people criticise the modern players for the money they earn, but I don't," he says. "If some 18-year-old can go on telly and earn a fortune for singing no better than someone down the pub, then they deserve every penny they get.

"I'd have been delighted to earn big money if I'd been given the chance.

Although perhaps it's as well I never did, because it would have killed me.

"There's never been anything called saving as far as I'm concerned.

If I have it, it goes!

"When I first started we were earning £7 a week in the season, £5 a week in the summer, and I remember (players' union leader) Jimmy Hill addressing a players' meeting, telling us he thought he could get us all on £25 a week. We laughed... we thought he was crackers."

It's only a short bus ride for Albert from the sheltered flat he now lives in to the stadium where they used to chant his name.

He still goes, as often as he can.

"I'm still a United fan, I'll always go to watch them," he says.

"And today I still go through the same routine as I did when I was a player - a bit of superstition before a match. I shave, clean my teeth and put on a fresh shirt. The other week I didn't have a shave before the game with West Ham and they lost, so I still have some influence!

"I'm glad I'm back here where I started, close enough to go down to the ground. You see, United's in my blood."

So how do today's players compare with those who were lost in the disaster?

"It's a different game now, all about pace and speed, but in my day we had lads who were as quick as they are today," Albert says.

"The ones I rate now are Rooney, Ronaldo, Ryan Giggs and the lad Nemanja Vidic. Any of them would have found a place in our squad."

Albert, who's been twice divorced and has seven children, is now happily settled in a long-term relationship.

But his journey after Munich, out of football and into the world of ordinary work, would read like a horror story to today's multimillionaire players.

After his playing days ended at Mansfield Town, he was 31, with no pension, no savings.

He took a job in a bakery in the Nottinghamshire town, working 12-hour shifts. "It was hard," he says. "I'd never been in a factory until then. But people were good to me. They knew who I was and they treated me well.

"I took the tins containing the loaves out of the oven and put them on trays. That was my job."

When he moved back to Manchester, relatives who worked on the docks found him a job there.

He was still unfamiliar with his new world. On his first day he turned up in new trousers and a Crombie overcoat.

His new mates gave him the nickname Pockets Scanlon - because, they told him, "Albert, you're always standing around with your hands in your pockets, talking football."

It was tough, dirty work, but it paid well. A basic of £12 a week. With overtime, a docker could earn more than a footballer.

"I loved the docks, it was almost like playing football again, because we were all mates, like a team," Albert says. "I was always being asked questions about soccer. The lads always wanted my opinion on this team or that, this player or that.

"I have to say I loved it, because it meant they accepted me and at the same time had a bit of respect for what I'd achieved earlier in my life.

"I was still the bloke who used to be Scanlon of United."

'I wok up in hospital and could hear Duncn Edwrds shouting from his bed'

[Kenneth]

It is shocking. I never realised that some of their players were treated so badly.

You'd expect the club to look after them after a tragedy like that not discard them so cruelly.

Maybe they just weren't very good, not good enough for a European cup winning team. Football wasn't the big money industry it is now and the general working environment/conditions was vastly different in those days. Looking at this in simplistic terms is easy but probably not appropriate. I doubt Liverpool players who retired through injury were treated any better at the time.

[Kenneth]

i like the idea of a minute's applause

I don't, not when you're talking about the deaths of 23 people, most of whom weren't players and applauded by the fans when alive.

[Craig_H]

I'm not sure the commemoration of the Munich anniversary is about 'winning' or 'losing' - pretty childish viewpoint there, in the 2nd article.

[dom9]

Am I getting this right?

City are removing sponsors logos from their shirts for the occasion, but United are sponsoring the event with AIG?

How does that work?

[cobain]

I watched the memorial service today at Old Trafford. Very touching. Although there were two things that kind of irritated me.

1. The priest who had a smile on his face throughout the service - I thought he was laughing all the time;
2. Gary Neville

[tsb]

United remove anti-City banner

Daniel Taylor
Wednesday February 6, 2008
The Guardian

Manchester United's extensive efforts to make sure the 50th-anniversary commemorations of the Munich air disaster pass smoothly included some emergency work at Old Trafford yesterday and the removal of a banner that pokes fun at Manchester City's lack of silverware.

The banner, which hangs permanently from the old Stretford End and has transferable numbers, says "32 Years", the period since City last won a trophy. It will be modified to "33" at the start of 2009 but several United supporters contacted the club to say it might incite the 3,000 away fans on Sunday.

The overriding concern of officials at Old Trafford is that City's supporters should not disrupt the minute's silence and as a gesture of goodwill United decided to remove the banner until the FA Cup tie against Arsenal on February 16. "The fans who have contacted us don't think this banner is appropriate," said a spokesman. "They have asked us to replace it for this one match and the club is happy to help."

There is also unease at United about the minute's silence before England's game against Switzerland tonight. Sir Alex Ferguson has voiced concern that there might be a "mixed reaction" and Wayne Rooney has appealed for the crowd to behave in the correct manner: "The important thing is paying our respects and making sure those who died are honoured in the right way."

A remembrance service will be held at Old Trafford today, and United and City will wear 50s-style kits, devoid of sponsors' logos, on Sunday. There will be a mascot to represent each of the 23 people who died, and the surnames will be on the back of their shirts. Ferguson will lay a commemorative wreath, as will the City manager, Sven-Goran Eriksson.

The clubs have been trying to promote a message of unity and the away end will be decorated with posters of Frank Swift, the former City goalkeeper who was among those who died in Munich.

http://football.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/0,,2252958,00.html

Jesus, how small time is that. Having a permanent banner about another club?

[Meols Kopite]

The banner, which hangs permanently from the old Stretford End and has transferable numbers, says "32 Years", the period since City last won a trophy. It will be modified to "33" at the start of 2009 but several United supporters contacted the club to say it might incite the 3,000 away fans on Sunday.

The club put the banner there?

[Shaggy]

Sad *******s. They're a massive club but they continually display a small-time attitude.

Still, this thread is no place for that sort of talk.