Lucky for us we live in the internet age, otherwise how would anyone know who Jurgen Klinsmann is? Certainly not Liverpool co-owner Tom Hicks, whose ill-advised public comments this week (above) earned the scorn of the Mirror’s Brian Reade :
This week, on the 19th anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster, as the families and survivors turned up at Anfield to remember the dead, every national paper carried the latest twists in the battle which is decimating Liverpool’s reputation.
Tom Hicks recorded a Sky interview on that very day, his main point in the latest dirt-dishing exercise being that Rick Parry was a “disaster”. Yes. He called him a disaster. On April 15th. Clearly when the Texan Googled Liverpool, he got bored before the bit about 96 fans dying, and switched off.
A clearer example of how this callous, insensitive and ignorant individual works would be hard to find.
And if he wasn’t a non-person in the eyes of Kopites before this week, he is now.
That the owner of Liverpool FC should choose to smear, point-score and trivialise the word “disaster” on the Hillsborough anniversary is the clearest example of his lack of fitness for office.
It is a club, a history and a people Hicks will never understand. And trying to win the fans over by shooting a propaganda film with a Liverpool mug in his hand, proves it beyond doubt.
In Hicks’ defense, he’s the man who signed Chan Ho-Park to a $65 million contract. Who would be better qualified to speak of disasters?
As of this writing, Liverpool hold a 1-0 lead at relegation-threatened Fulham. Barring an unlikely turnaround, the Cottagers will end their run as the Premier League’s only side with 3 Americans in the starting XI.
So, calling Rick Parry’s reign a “disaster” is more decimating to Liverpool’s reputation than Heysel was?