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Andrew Watson: The 'most influential' black footballer for decades lost to history

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  By Andrew Aloia BBC Sport Last updated on 11 October 2021 11 October 2021 . From the section Football Watson was a trailblazer who helped transform how football was played There are two murals of black footballers facing one another across an alleyway in Glasgow. One helped shape football as we know it, the other is Pele. Andrew Watson captained Scotland to a 6-1 win over England on his debut in 1881. He was a pioneer, the world's first black international, but for more than a century the significance of his achievements went unrecognised. Research conducted over the past three decades has left us with some biographical details: a man descended of slaves and of those who enslaved them, born in Guyana, raised to become an English gentleman and famed as one of Scottish football's first icons. And yet today, 100 years on from his death aged 64, Watson remains something of an enigma, the picture built around him a fractured one. His grainy, faded, sepia image evokes many differen
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Aston Villa's billionaire co-owner Wes Edens involved in mega £6.3bn deal

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 Wes Edens has joined forces with America's second wealthiest family in a deal to takeover the UK's fourth largest supermarket chain, Morrisons

Aston Villa’s co-owner and American billionaire Wes Edens is involved in a business deal that has brought some of the wealthiest people in the world together.

A trio of private investment groups led by SoftBank-owned Fortress have struck a £6.3billion deal to acquire Wm Morrison, Britain’s fourth-largest supermarket chain, according to the Daily Mail.

Edens became a billionaire alongside his Fortress co-founders after the company went public in 2007, and is its co-chief executive.

Villa ’s co-owner has been a member of the board of directors of Fortress since November 2006, with responsibility for the company’s private equity business, which primarily invests in transportation and infrastructure, real estate, health care, financial services and media.

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While he and Nassef Sawiris continue to fund Villa’s Premier League resurgence, Edens also boasts an impressive portfolio across other ventures and his taste for success stems from his business acumen away from the sporting world.

Now involved in one of the biggest deals of his career to date, Edens will work with America’s second wealthiest family, the Koch family - who according to Forbes are worth an estimated $100billion - and others.

The New York Times previously noted that Edens had a “taste for distressed assets,” and the level of investment he’s ploughed into Villa is proof of that, as well as his exceptional running of NBA franchise, the Milwaukee Bucks.

The Bucks hadn’t tasted victory in the NBA Championships since 1971, and scepticism was rife when Edens teamed up with fellow billionaire businessman Marc Lasry to buy the franchise in 2014, in a deal worth a reported $550million.

Edens’ Bucks delivered a 26-game turnaround in the 2014/15 season combined with the fourth largest year-on-year increase in ticket sales across the NBA. During his ownership, Bucks have made play-offs three out of four seasons and secured first back-to-back winning seasons since 1999.

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