Madeleine McCann Is An Everton Mascot
MADELEINE McCann is now an official Everton FC mascot. The club has printed T-shirts.
Shirts, emblazoned with pictures of Madeleine McCann, are being handed out ahead of Everton FC’s Europa League tie with Portuguese team Benfica. They have been created to highlight the campaign to find the child, who was three when she vanished while on holiday in Portugal in May 2007.
Benfica play in Portugal. Win it for Maddie, Everton. Can Our Maddie inspire? It might catch on. What team did Ben Needham support? Keith Bennett?
Congratulations to the McCanns for keeping their daughter in the public eye. But who does not crave for them to find her; to be left alone? Right now, their hunt for their daughter exists as a public spectacle. You wear the T-shirt to show that you care. You display a shallow sentiment. Others join in. You all feel it. Only you don’t. Not really. You go through the motions, afraid to say, “No, I don’t feel much at all.”
Every fan who bought a ticket can collect a T-shirt, which has the words “We’re Still Looking For You” on it.
And you thought Evertonians were just looking for a decent centre half.
A total of 6,000 shirts have been produced by the club - 3,000 in English and 3,000 bearing the message in Portuguese.
It’s all horribly mawkish. Anorak was there when Liverpool fans commemorated the 96 who died in Hillsborough. It was poignant and noisy. And it was relevant. This is something else:
Everton chairman Bill Kenwright said: “I will never, ever forget that image of a beautiful, smiling child in an Everton shirt.”
And you thought a missing child was painful enough; even though the media were turned on by her blue eyes and blonde hair. And you also might have thought fans were on there way to watch a game of football, excited at a chance to escape the pains of life for an hour and an a half, with a break for half time. But you should know different:
Fans with a match ticket can pick up a free T-shirt from Goodison Park or Liverpool Airport before embarking on their flight to Portugal.
Let us know if you got one and why you did; and why you didn’t. What, you didn’t get a T-shirt and wear it for Our Maddie? What’s the matter with you - don’t you care?
An anecdote: When Princess Diana was eulogised at Wesmintster Abbey, two Japanese people were laughing in Green Park, enjoying the sun. One began talking on a phone. A woman near to your writer moved across, hung up their phone call and asked them, rhetorically: “Don’t you have any shame?”
When we advertise our grief and care in public for someone we never met and never knew, we do so to reveal more about ourselves than the subject. We display signs of mourning sickness.
Spotter: Yampster
Madeleine McCann: The Story In Pictures
Posted: 22nd, October 2009 | In: Key Posts, Madeleine McCann Comments (20) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink
Comments
October 24th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
I just remember discussing it at the time and some of the Portuguese posters were saying the Mccans had until about 20th September to request the case be kept open.
October 24th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
June
That must be it, then!
Cool
Sure you’re right.
In any case, if the case was still open, the Mcs would be being blamed for the waste of police resources! In fact, I remember GMc in some interview shortly after it was archived, being tackled on this very issue of the expense they had put the Portuguese police to! He said that they did not expect Portugal to go on and on footing the bill, and that they were now willing to conduct it themselves using the Fund alone. The implication was that he was being BLAMED for the cost of the police investigation! Now they’re being blamed (only by a tiny number of people, I know) for NOT pushing to have the case reopened and having even MORE public money spent on it.
This is the usual “Damned if they do, damned if they don’t!” syndrome.
I don’t know what happened to Madeleine but until there is evidence against someone of his or her criminal involvement, the usual principle of presumed innocence should apply. It’s what we’d all rightly expect for ourselves. It’s a crucial principle which should be defended absolutely. So far, the police have said there is no case to be made against anyone at all.
October 24th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
As I understand it, anyone can ask for the case to be re-opened but Portugese Law states that first there has to be relevant new information to warrant the re-opening.
There has allegedly been several attempts by various people to apply for it to be re-opened but none have got past the first hurdle.
Even the McCanns have to produce new evidence alongside a request, just as they would also have had to produce new evidence to stop it being shelved in the first place. Not just ‘please don’t do it’.
Isn’t that how it also works in UK? Cases get shelved through lack of evidence and information but can be re-opened if something new comes along. Like the young woman who disappeared in Bath but whose remains have just been found, by chance, 13 years later.
.
October 24th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
Well ok there’s an excuse that they haven’t been running the country, but if they haven’t been protecting the McC’s either, just what have they been doing?
Ah expenses…..
October 24th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
Bat E
Here’s a quote from that website…..
“These people have been protected by a ring of British politicians including Prime Minister Gordon Brown and those close to him, including a spin doctor, the Foreign Secretary, a government spokesperson and former Prime Minister Tony Blair.”
!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
So THAT’S why they’ve not been running the country, then…….!! Too busy protecting the McCanns.
Oh….and here’s the Flat earth Society website……
http://www.alaska.net/~clund/e_djublonskopf/Flatearthsociety.htm
October 24th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
Brandon, is that website for real?
I always thought it was a hoax.
October 24th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
Thatpoorpriest, that’s what I thought.
The parents could request that it be opened at any time. I also thought they just had to say before the deadline and it wouldn’t have been archived in the first place.
October 23rd, 2009 at 8:07 pm
to mods:
you quote a source (not the McCanns themselves) as saying they don’t want the case archived. BUT this was BEFORE it WAS archived.
Since it has been archived, they evade answering questions about whether they want it opened (see Oprah interview and others). Plus, it is understood that the parents themselves could ask for it to be opened at any time, (other people would have to have a reason e.g. new evidence) but the McCanns can simply ask, but don’t ask.
October 22nd, 2009 at 8:05 pm
Nicole
‘……..all portugaise people who knows the case is archived as “homicide” ‘
How could they?
It wasn’t.
You’re confused.
October 22nd, 2009 at 7:55 pm
What a fuss!
Nobody is forced to wear the T-shirt. It may seem a bit mawkish to some (me, for example) but it’s only a gesture of comforting solidarity with the family, and a reminder about the search for Madeleine. Where’s the harm? It’s in a good cause.
And nobody is forced to give a single penny to the Madeleine Fund, well………… ………..er……..with one or two exceptions, maybe………!
October 22nd, 2009 at 2:23 pm
There’s still a strong feeling amongst Everton staff and fans that they want to do everything they can to help. Despite the many problems Liverpool has, there’s a lot of pride in our city and we always look out for our own, wherever they, or we, may be. Madeleine will always be one of ours.
October 22nd, 2009 at 2:03 pm
http://mccannmilliondollarchallenge.webs.com/
Tom Franks offered 1m to hunt down the man the McCanns claimed “probably abducted Madeleine”if they cld provide evidence to substantiate that claim.The alternative offered was that the McCanns cld remove their lies.The McCanns quietly removed. from their web all reference to “Madeleine’s probable abductor,” without an apology for either misleading the public or an apology for taking money from the public based on lies.
Tom Franks offered 1m to hunt down the man the McCanns claimed “probably abducted Madeleine”if they cld provide evidence to substantiate that claim.The alternative offered was that the McCanns cld remove their lies.The McCanns quietly remove…d from their web all reference to “Madeleine’s probable abductor,” without an apology for either misleading the public or an apology for taking money from the public based on lies.
October 22nd, 2009 at 1:57 pm
Wise word Brandon, wise word
October 22nd, 2009 at 1:00 pm
te
October 22nd, 2009 at 12:59 pm
test
October 22nd, 2009 at 12:32 pm
One sentance when it happened which was bound to have been said. I dont understand why all the effort since that day has not been non stop on getting it reopened ?
October 22nd, 2009 at 11:45 am
Mods: They did not want the case shelved and would love for it to be reopened.
Have you got any proof of this?
Mods:
http://www.anorak.co.uk/madeleine-mccann/180382.html
“We don’t want the case to be archived in any way. We still believe Madeleine could be alive, so the police must keep an operational inquiry going, looking for a missing person. Of course we want Gerry and Kate to be cleared as suspects, but we do not want the police to stop looking for Madeleine. We will never give up the search for her”
October 22nd, 2009 at 9:39 am
One has to wonder why, if like the McCanns, you keep saying that your child is alive and has been abducted, they don’t plead with the Potugese Police and any other force to keep the investigation going. If it’s still an unresolved abduction surely the one thing that you’d want is for the police to keep looking and trying to resolve it.
Mods: They did not want the case shelved and wold love for it to be reopened.
I don’t know why, but I’m still finding it impossible to get a straight answer about Madeleine McCann from Leicestershire police.
I called to ask about Madeleine and almost before I’d asked the question was being given the old brush off: “It’s a Portuguese investigation, not ours.”
The Portuguese authorities closed their investigation in July last year. The press officer said she hadn’t heard or read about that.
Apparently, the Leicstershire force still passes on any potential leads to the dynamic Portuguese police who established precisely nothing about Madeleine’s disappearance during their 15-month inquiry.
I gave it 24 hours and called back. This time I was told that all the Leicestershire cops involved in the Madeleine case were on half-term holiday. So push off.
She didn’t actually say that, but it felt like she had.
October 22nd, 2009 at 7:12 am
This has been going on for over two years now this constant non-stop publicity by the McCanns in their all consumming desire to find their daughter. One has to ask if this is not hindering their chances to find their daughter, if, in fact, she is alive. If she was abducted by someone who truly wanted a child to love and then were faced with all the non-stop publicity with her pictures being constantly shown, and also those pictures of her ‘aged’, they would never take her out in public to chance her being seen and recognized.
October 21st, 2009 at 6:35 pm
It’s a pity she wasn’t a Man U fan - they have a bigger demographic & I’m sure none of them have heard of her….