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| Robert Plant (left) and QCurl Sharif at Wembley Stadium afterparty following a soccer match earlier this year. Plant has joined Sharif this weekend at the Hindleg estate outside of London. |
Man Ray Natural
The Mainline Dope
LONDON—London Bakers owner QCurl Sharif did not travel with the team to Nashville for this week's divisional game against the East Nashville Black Dogs, as reported on the Times of London website early Thursday. Sharif has chosen to stay indefinitely at his country estate Hindleg, near Bladderstone, in the rolling hills an hour northwest of London.
Bakers PR maven Faith Popcorn told the Times Sharif had expressed a leeriness of traveling to the U.S. as the presidential impeachment inquiry hit high gear. Bakers minority partner Petro Poroshenko, former president of Ukraine, has become part of the narrative within the inquiry as Republicans have pointed to possible corruption and improprieties between the Obama administration and Poroshenko's.
In a prepared statement released by Sharif earlier in the week, he claimed that “Big Chocky had done nothing wrong as Ukraine's president, and that the Republican attempt to deflect attention from Trump's blatant, orchestrated campaign of corruption for personal gain is hollow and smells of Putin thuggery.”
Sharif, himself, was poisoned during a summer spiritual retreat in North Carolina in 2018, an event that is widely believed to have been coordinated by Russian intelligence. His lengthy recovery kept Sharif out ot the team's day-to-day until this year, a highly disappointing season after such high hopes.
His decision not to travel with the team to Nashville has brought speculation that Sharif fears for his life. Maven said otherwise.
“His decision is based simply on his desire to keep the Bakers focused on the game with the Black Dogs,” she told the Times. “He wants Mr. Dogg and the lads to go in there and pull one out of their hearts and bring it back to London. Quite frankly, if Mr. Sharif attended the game, the security considerations at the stadium and the Cherry Bomb and Treehouse would be mind-boggling.
“Our people on the ground have expressed some concern, even though the Kurdish community in Nashville has offered security support, and he decided to repair to Hindleg. He has a weekend planned there with Robert Plant, which will include watching the game together, and I believe Judge [Naomi] Morningstar has arranged to fly in and join them, as well.”
