Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho announced a new television gig today, and it’s certainly going to raise some eyebrows. Mourinho will be doing 2018 World Cup analysis/punditry, just like so many other managers who will have the summer off, but it’s for no ordinary employer.
Mourinho will be working for RT, a television network funded by the Kremlin, which has been labeled a foreign agent by the United States Federal government. Russia meddled in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, claim the findings of 17 top U.S. National intelligence agencies. RT is one of the media entities that has been caught up in the election interference mess, having now been labeled as a “foreign agent” by the U.S. government, and also dropped by some United States cable providers.
The Manchester United boss appeared in a jaunty video accompanying the announcement in which he pretends to coach an RT crew about how to cover the World Cup.
“Guys, I know you are nervous. This is a huge tournament and a huge amount of pressure,” Mourinho said to the stunned-looking RT journalists. “We will show the world a great game – the greatest game.” Mourinho added in a statement that he was “very happy to join the team at RT” and share his insights into the five weeks of matches that kick off in Moscow on 14 June.
The World Cup will kick off in Russia in just over 100 days. Here’s that video below by the way, via YouTube, referenced in The Guardian article:
Getting back to the Russian election interference topic, Chelsea Owner Roman Abramovich (Mourinho’s former boss) has been named to the United States Treasury Department’s Russian Oligarchs list, which many have dubbed the “Putin list.”
It’s already been well documented that Abramovich is a very close confidant of Putin, and also a bosom buddy to Jared Kushner, son-in-law of United States President Donald Trump. While Abramovich, and the other names on the list, aren’t being sanctioned right now, it’s believed that they could be hit with economic sanctions in the near future.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, currently contributes regularly to WGN CLTV and the Tribune company’s blogging community Chicago Now.
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