It pays to look like a hooligan, but not to be one

I’m willing to guess that most of us couldn’t pick former NHL hockey player Pavel Bure out of a crowd even if he was wearing a jersey with his name on the back of it. The instinct would be to look for a guy with a mullet, fake teeth and a worn down body. In other words, to look for a guy who fits the description of many a football hooligan.

Last October, British Airways confused Bure with some Russian football hooligans so they barred him from flying from Moscow to London. Bure sued the airline and on Friday a Moscow court awarded him $2,615, a sum that didn’t please his lawyer Dmitry Ragulin.

Ragulin said he was planning to appeal to seek bigger damages. “We are disappointed that the court had awarded such small compensation for the moral damages,” he said.

“If the British airline violated the right of such a famous person, known throughout the world as the Russian Rocket, then what about ordinary mortals?

“If David Beckham, the British idol, was thrown off a plane by a Russian airline, then what size of compensation would he have got?,” Ragulin said.

I don’t have an answer for that but whatever the compensation would be it wouldn’t be as much as I would pay to see Beckham fly on a Russian plane. I once flew on an Aeroflot flight where I was told to sit in the aisle because there weren’t enough seats. Seriously. Fortunately the open bottle of vodka, supplied by the flight crew, made the trip somewhat palatable.

Bure’s lawyer, by the way, is a clever one. He helped to restore Bure’s dignity when he successfully sued a Russian tabloid for writing a story that Bure’s girlfriend at the time, the tennis player Anna Kournikova, had two vaginas. First a vagina settlement, now a football hooligan payout…Bure is well on his way to a ridiculous lawsuit hattrick.

Speaking of hooligans, the Danish fan who pounded seven thousand beers and attacked a referee is now being sued by the Danish football authorities. He better quick find himself a famous celebrity with two vaginas so he can come up with the dough to pay the $348,500 in damages they are seeking.

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