Man City’s Thai Owner Brings Thailand’s NT to England

By: Laurie | January 5th, 2008

What’s one of the benefits of being a billionaire owner of a large EPL team?

You can fly your entire National Team in to train with them.

Man City’s Thai owner, Thaksin Shinawatra is doing just that, paying to fly Thailand’s entire national team to England for two weeks to train with the Man City players. His goal? World Cup 2010.

Thaksin will pay for the 25-man national squad to stay in Manchester for two weeks, where they will train with City’s first team to prepare for next month’s third round of World Cup qualifiers, Thai coach Charnwit Polcheewin said on Saturday.

They will also play warm-up matches with two clubs from the English second and third divisions.

“It will be a tough for us, and very cold too, but if we want to qualify, we need to put ourselves under more pressure,” Charnwit told Reuters.

The Thai coaches will be given lessons from their City counterparts and the injured players will be treated by the club’s doctors and physiotherapists, Charnwit added.

And what’s Thaksin’s interest, aside from being from Thailand?

He’s the former Prime Minister, ousted in a bloodless coup in 2006, “accused of corruption and abuse of power.” His family’s business interests are still under investigation, and he can’t actually set foot in Thailand without getting arrested. But he can export the entire national team to improve their chances of getting into the World Cup.

Apparently soccer transcends everything, including corruption investigations.

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Category: Asia, England, English Premier League, Europe, World Football

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bluemeanies

Thailand politics has been about finding a balance between king, army and elected leaders. Thaksin and his Thai Rak Thai was immensely popular in the rural areas but not with the urban elite. He had corporate conflict of interests but not, from what I've heard, anything that you wouldn't see in Italian politics. The students and urban elite sided with the army to throw him out and to keep peace in the cities the king sided with them. Last month there was the 1st free election since the coup. The party that was basically Thai Rak Thai run by Thaksin's deputy won hugely, especially in rural areas, and there is talk of scrapping the corruption charges and maybe even allowing him to run for office again.
Ian

Oh, I'm not saying he's not a monster. For all I know, he eats babies ... I'll admit my knowledge of his reign is limited to a very few articles, none of which paint a pretty picture. I just think there's worse ways to use your billions, regardless of how you accrued them.

But, you're right, his history makes it fair to question his motives.
Jan

"Nice to see he still wants the best for his national team despite being basically banished from that very nation."

More realistically this sentence should read as follows:
It's not surprising to see him using the popularity of football and the EPL in Thailand as a route back into Thai politics.

It might also be worth mentioning that he's on Amnesty International's and Human Right Watch's list of very bad people.
Ian

As long as he doesn't pull a Romanov, and load the team with Thai players, I have no problem with this. Nice to see he still wants the best for his national team despite being basically banished from that very nation.