RFL close to selling stake in expanded Super League to private equity

RFL close to selling stake in expanded Super League to private equity

Advanced talks in train after NRL interest waned US-based LionCap Global among key suitors The Rugby Football League is in advanced talks with several private equity firms about selling a stake in Super League. The Guardian has learned that the RFL has had multiple offers from funds interested in buying into the competition after the collapse of a proposed investment in Super League from Australia’s National Rugby League. Continue reading...

Be sure of this: many of the horrors the west allowed in Gaza will come closer to home | Owen Jones

Be sure of this: many of the horrors the west allowed in Gaza will come closer to home | Owen Jones

History shows the crimes of empire were later mirrored on European soil. Dehumanisation and militarised terror both seem normalised now It’s clear what Israel’s western-facilitated genocide has done to Gaza. But what has it done to us? Palestinians are the “canaries in a coalmine”, the Palestinian analyst Muhammad Shehada tells me. “We’re screaming of a major warning of what’s about to come your way. When you have a media-political class that’s relishing, delighting in the murder of our children, do you think they’re going to care about yours?” There is a warning from our recent, terrifying past that we should heed. Colonialism, warned Martinican author Aimé Césaire, “works to decivilise the coloniser, to brutalise him in the true sense of the word, to degrade him, to awaken him to buried instincts, to covetousness, violence, race hatred, and moral relativism”. The horrors of western imperialism – with its dehumanisation and violence – were, he argued, ultimately redirected into Europe in the form of fascism. This was the imperial “boomerang”, as the German-American philosopher Hannah Arendt agreed. Continue reading...

‘A defining moment of our nation’: Cape Verde goes wild to celebrate historic World Cup spot

‘A defining moment of our nation’: Cape Verde goes wild to celebrate historic World Cup spot

By blending diaspora players with homegrown talent the island nation of fewer than 600,000 people has qualified for 2026 tournament On 5 July 1975, the Cape Verdean flag was raised for the first time at Estádio da Várzea in the capital city of Praia, marking the nation’s declaration of independence from Portugal. At that moment, there was no national football team – and no sign of what was to come. Exactly 100 days after the 50th anniversary of independence, the same flag was waved at the very same ground, where crowds gathered to celebrate Cape Verde’s historic first World Cup qualification with the players who had earlier secured the decisive 3-0 win over Eswatini five miles away at the National Stadium. This island nation off the coast of Senegal, with a population of fewer than 600,000, has become the second-smallest country to qualify for the tournament, after Iceland in 2018. Continue reading...