bromance

CHRISTIAN ERIKSEN was booed back at Brentford in United colours for having the temerity to join England’s biggest club three years ago.

And Bryan Mbeumo can expect similar treatment after the rancour around his transfer.

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United felt Brentford attempted to railroad Mbeumo into joining Tottenham or Newcastle United, convinced that he would be on a lower wage that would then drive up his transfer fee. Mbeumo joined United for £65, rising to £71m.

When Brentford finally relented and sold the AWOL Yoane Wissa to Newcastle on deadline day, it was for £50m plus £5m in add-ons. 

Wissa is an actual striker and scored as many goals as Mbeumo last season, which undermined Brentford’s belief that they could have recouped more from Spurs or Newcastle for Mbeumo. 

Xavi Simons and Nick Woltemade, Tottenham and Newcastle’s most expensive summer signings, were not as costly as Mbeumo.

The press room at the Community Stadium is so tight you tend to literally rub shoulders with colleagues. Staff from United and Brentford may keep their distance.

MAIN ATTRACTION

KOBBIE MAINOO is out of the United side and one of his closest teammates, Alejandro Garnacho, was out in the cold before he left last month.

But Mainoo has a new best pal in Leny Yoro.

Mainoo and Yoro have grown close since the latter joined United from Lille last summer.

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Mainoo started learning Spanish while he was out two years ago as Garnacho and Amad are both fluent in the language.

Garnacho remains tight with Amad – the pair are represented by the same agent – as they demonstrated with last week’s infamous Instagram Story that Amad received online abuse for.

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Mainoo is something of an outlier in that he has gravitated towards foreign teammates.

Although Yoro spoke impeccable English at the time of his £59million transfer. 

PORT OF CALL

PORTUGUESE pair Bruno Fernandes and Diogo Dalot both attended the Lewis Capaldi concert at Co-Op Live after last week’s victory over Chelsea.

Members of the Fernandes family had flown over from Portugal for the occasion.

Or to provide childcare for his two children.

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CARR INSURANCE

THE NEW home matchday schedule for United players to report at Carrington before boarding a bus for Old Trafford caused confusion for some of the younger squad members last month.

A handful of youngsters assumed the team coach would ferry them back to the training complex after the game, where they had naively left their vehicles.

Senior players are usually dropped off at Carrington by a spouse or confidant and so their vehicle is in place at the stadium post-match.

Some stranded junior members of the squad had to get Ubers to the training base after a game to be reunited with their vehicles.

Erik ten Hag scrapped United’s pre-match stays at The Lowry Hotel in 2022 and the squad would arrive four hours before kick-off for home games.

Ruben Amorim has opted to delay United’s travel time and they now tend to get to their ground an hour-and-a-half before kick-off.

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HARDY ABLE

UNITED are in the process of signing teenage goalkeeper Charlie Hardy from Derby County.

Hardy, 16, has played five times for England Under 16s and is going through formalities to complete a move to United. 

He was named on the bench against United U18s when he was only 14 last year and made his debut for Derby U18s at the age of 15.

As a category one scholar, Hardy can move to another English club at any time over the course of the season.

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PELL RINGER

MANUEL PELLEGRINI thinks Antony just needed an arm put around him and a club that makes him feel important.

United reject Antony, 25, has been reborn at Real Betis after a miserable two years at Old Trafford.

The Brazil winger sparkled after joining Betis on loan in January and made the move permanent after long talks brought a deadline-day switch for up to £21.6m.

United included a 50 per cent sell-on clause in the deal for Antony, who followed a classy assist with a late goal to secure a 2-2 draw in Wednesday’s Europa League opener against Nottingham Forest.

Before the game, Betis boss Pellegrini, 72, said: “I try to make them feel the best so that they can also give me their best.”

Antony is much better suited to La Liga, where he is more comfortable with the ball at his feet and not so physically pressed.

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SEOUL  — The first summit between South Korean President Lee Jae Myung and President Trump was a picture of easy chumminess.

On Monday, the two leaders bonded over the fact that they both have survived assassination attempts, and they talked golf. When Trump admired the handcrafted wooden fountain pen Lee used to sign the White House guest book, saying “it’s a nice pen, you want to take it with you?” Lee offered it as an impromptu gift. At a Q&A in front of reporters, Lee thanked Trump for bringing peace to the Korean peninsula through his previous summits with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and urged him to meet with Kim again.

“If you become the peacemaker, then I will assist you by being a pacemaker,” Lee told Trump, drawing a chuckle.

These scenes, along with the two-hour closed door meeting between the two leaders that followed, seemed to put to rest fears that Lee — a former governor and legislator with little prior experience on the international stage — might be subject to a “Zelensky moment”: cornered and berated by a counterpart who has long complained that Seoul takes Washington for granted.

Karoline Leavitt, White House press secretary, holds a trade letter sent by the White House to South Korea during a news conference. On July 30, the U.S. struck a trade deal with South Korea, but details have been scant.

(Bloomberg / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

It was an outcome for which South Korea painstakingly prepared.

As a presidential candidate earlier this year, Lee had vowed he would bring home a diplomatic win at all costs, even if it meant he had to “crawl between Trump’s legs.” To smooth along trade negotiations with the U.S. in late July, South Korean officials brought with them red caps emblazoned with the slogan: “MAKE AMERICA SHIPBUILDING GREAT AGAIN.” And ahead of Monday’s summit, Lee compared notes with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, whom he met last week, and brushed up on his assignment by reading “Trump: The Art of the Deal.”

Those early efforts so far have seemingly paid off. Key South Korean proposals, such as a $150-billion plan to help revitalize the U.S. shipbuilding industry, have been received favorably, helping secure the trade deal with Washington last month, according to South Korean officials.

“We’re going to be buying ships from South Korea,” Trump said on Monday. “But we’re also going to have them make ships here with our people.”

But despite what is widely viewed as a positive first step for Lee — establishing face-to-face chemistry with a figure known for both unpredictable swings and a deeply personal style of diplomacy — analysts say it is too early to call it a win. Several unresolved issues still loom large, and these may yet be snarled in the details as working-level negotiations play out.

“I actually thought they could get along surprisingly well because both Lee and Trump aren’t ideologically motivated in their thinking and practice of foreign policy,” said James Park, an East Asia expert at the Quincy Institute, a Washington-based think tank.

“But it remains to be seen how their relationship unfolds. Should strong tensions emerge on trade and security issues that both sides find it difficult to compromise on in the future, the relationship between Lee and Trump will be tested. There’s a case in point — how the friendship between Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has fractured in recent months over tariffs and India’s purchases of Russian weapons.“

Although Trump promised on Monday to honor last month’s trade agreement — which lowered the tariff rate on Seoul to 15% from 25% — details have been scant and the deal has yet to be formalized in writing. But both sides have touted it as a win, leaving room to reignite long-running disagreements over issues like U.S. rice and beef, which have been subject to import restrictions in South Korea.

As part of that deal, South Korea also pledged to invest $350 billion into key U.S. industries. But behind the scenes, officials from both countries reportedly continue to disagree how this fund will be structured or used, with U.S. officials seeking far more discretionary power than the South Korean side is willing to give.

U.S. Army soldiers attend a transfer of authority ceremony in South Korea. In the past, President Trump has said that South Korea should pay $10 billion a year to help keep the 28,500 U.S. troops stationed in the country.

(SOPA Images / SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

The summit hasn’t fully quelled South Korean concerns over defense and military cooperation either.

In the past, Trump has said that South Korea should pay $10 billion a year to help keep the 28,500 U.S. troops stationed in the country. That is around nine times what Seoul currently pays under an existing agreement between the two countries.

While South Korean officials said that the defense cost-sharing issue was not discussed during Monday’s summit, Park says that the issue may resurface down the line.

“The alliance cost-sharing issue has been a consistent interest of Trump’s over the years,” he said.

Trump’s grievances over the cost of stationing the U.S. military in South Korea has fueled concerns that the U.S. will pull out troops from its bases here to counter China, making the country more vulnerable to North Korea’s military threats.

The scenario has gained plausibility in recent months, following reports earlier this year that U.S. defense officials were reviewing a plan to relocate thousands of U.S. military personnel stationed in South Korea to other locations in the Indo-Pacific, such as Guam.

While any reduction of troop size has long been a political anathema in South Korea, Lee Ho-ryung, a senior research fellow at the Seoul-based Korea Institute for Defense Analyses (KIDA), says that this may be less of a sticking point for President Lee than history might suggest, citing a speech the South Korean leader delivered shortly after the summit in which he pledged to increase Seoul’s own defense spending.

“The content of that speech and Q&A suggest that the two sides have somewhat aligned on these issues,” she said. “But it will still need to be further discussed at the working level.”

When asked by a reporter on Monday whether he was considering reducing the number of U.S. troops in South Korea, Trump deflected by saying “I don’t want to say that now because we’ve been friends.”

But then he pivoted to another suggestion that raised eyebrows in South Korea.

“Maybe one of the things I’d like to do is ask them to give us ownership of the land where we have the big fort,” he said. “I would like to see if we could get rid of the lease.”

Under an existing arrangement known as the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), South Korea currently grants the U.S. military rent-free use of the land where its bases are located. Speaking to legislators on Tuesday, South Korean Defense Minister Ahn Gyu-back summarily dismissed the suggestion, hinting that it may have been a negotiating tactic.

“It is impossible in the real world,” he said. “But from the perspective of President Trump, I think it may have been a comment intended to allow him to make a different strategic demand.”

In the meantime, a second round of negotiations with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un would be a win for both leaders.

But many experts believe that the window for getting North Korea to denuclearize under the previously discussed terms — partial sanctions relief — has closed since the failed summits between Trump and Kim in 2018 and 2019. North Korea recently dismissed any attempts to convince it to give up its nuclear weapons as a “mockery of the other party.”

Personal chemistry between President Lee and Trump can go only so far this time, says Lee of the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses.

“North Korea is effectively evading any economic sanctions through Russia and China,” she said. “Sanctions relief is no longer the enticing carrot that it once was.”

New Delhi, India — When Donald Trump returned to the White House in January, many Indian analysts celebrated, arguing that his bonhomie with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi would shield the country from the chaos that the United States president could unleash.

The two leaders had effectively campaigned for each other previously, attending joint rallies. They have repeatedly described each other as friends, and in February, Modi became among the first world leaders to visit Trump in the White House.

But six months later, a sobering reality has hit New Delhi, with Trump punishing it with a 25 percent tariff on imports and near-daily threats to increase those levies further because of India’s oil purchases from Russia, as he tries to force Moscow into accepting a ceasefire in its war on Ukraine.

An India-US trade deal remains elusive, and bilateral relations are on a slippery slope, according to some experts. “US-India relations are at the lowest point in decades,” Biswajit Dhar, a trade economist who has worked on several Indian trade deals, told Al Jazeera. Dozens of other countries, including neighbours India has tense ties with, such as Pakistan and Bangladesh, are facing lower tariffs.

Addressing a public rally on Saturday, Modi took a defiant stance against Trump’s tariff assaults. “The world economy is going through many apprehensions. There is an atmosphere of instability,” Modi said.

“Now, whatever we buy, there should be only one scale: we will buy those things which have been made by the sweat of an Indian,” he added.

Modi’s comments come as Indian officials reportedly reject stopping the buying of Russian crude.

Trump has blamed India’s buying of Russian oil for helping finance Moscow’s war on Ukraine. “They [Indians] don’t care how many people in Ukraine are being killed by the Russian War Machine,”  Trump said Monday. “Because of this, I will be substantially raising the Tariff paid by India to the USA.”

So, how did we get here? What are the growing points of discord between India and the US? And could India give up on Russian oil to save its relationship with the US?

What are the friction points in US-India relations?

Modi and Trump might speak highly of each other, but there is a growing number of areas where India and the US are at odds, ranging from trade agreements to strategic alignment.

No trade deal

Trade has long been a sticking point in US-India relations, even as strategic and defence ties have deepened. The US has consistently pushed for greater market access, lower tariffs and stronger protections, especially for its tech, pharmaceutical and agricultural exports. India, on the other hand, has resisted what it sees as disproportionate pressure to open up its economy in ways that may harm its domestic industries and small farmers.

Yet, before Trump, the two countries managed this economic relationship, despite its imbalance: India sold twice as much to the US as the US sold to India. The US wanted access to India’s growing markets, and India needed to export to the US, so keeping ties afloat was important to both.

After Trump first announced tariffs on almost all trading partners on April 1, Indian and US officials began talks to stitch together a trade deal. But disagreements over e-commerce regulation, digital data flows and price controls on medical devices have reportedly stalled progress.

Indian officials were frantically chasing the August 1 deadline set by Trump to avoid tariffs. But despite occasional breakthroughs, like India cutting tariffs on some US goods, the two countries have not yet concluded a full bilateral trade deal.

With negotiations still under way, New Delhi now faces 25 percent tariffs on its exports to the US, and Trump has threatened unspecified additional penalties tied to India’s energy and arms purchases from Russia.

“This is a pressure tactic by Trump,” said Anil Trigunayat, a former Indian diplomat who has served as India’s trade commissioner in New York. “Unlike others, India has not given in to what the Americans want because we have to protect our MSMEs and agriculture,” he added, using the acronym for micro, small, and medium enterprises.

Almost half of India’s population depends on agriculture for its livelihood, making the issue politically sensitive for every Indian government.

“Everybody is playing hardball on both sides, and it’s necessary to arrive at a mutually beneficial solution,” he told Al Jazeera.

India’s close ties with Russia

As Trump’s frustrations with Russia mount over stalled peace talks to end the war in Ukraine, the US president has been looking for more ways to corner Moscow. India’s longstanding relationship with Russia has emerged as a key target for Washington.

While the US views India as a key partner in countering China’s rise in the Asia Pacific, it has grown increasingly uneasy with New Delhi’s continued defence and energy ties with Moscow, analysts say.

At a time when the West has shunned Russian President Vladimir Putin, who also faces an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court related to the war in Ukraine, Modi visited Russia twice last year. In July 2024, Putin conferred upon Modi the Order of St Andrew the Apostle the First‑Called, Russia’s highest civilian honour.

Russia remains one of India’s largest arms suppliers, and their cooperation spans critical technologies, including missile systems and nuclear reactors. And after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, India ramped up imports of discounted Russian crude oil.

Kashmir ceasefire

After an attack by gunmen in Indian-administered Kashmir’s Pahalgam resort town on April 22, in which 26 civilians were killed, India and Pakistan engaged in their most expansive military conflict in decades.

As the South Asian nuclear-armed rivals traded missile and drone attacks in May, Trump said he intervened and told both countries to agree to a ceasefire, or there would be no trade.

“Fellas, come on. Let’s make a deal. Let’s do some trading. Let’s not trade nuclear missiles. Let’s trade the things that you make so beautifully,” Trump said a few days later in Riyadh.

“I used trade to a large extent to do [the ceasefire]. And it all stopped,” he added.

In India, which has long held the position that all disputes with Pakistan must be settled bilaterally, with no third-party mediation, Trump’s claim that he engineered the May 10 ceasefire that stopped the fighting has sparked criticism of Modi from the opposition.

Modi’s government has insisted that the truce was brought about bilaterally, that Modi did not speak to Trump during the conflict, and that – contrary to the US president’s claims – trade was never discussed as a factor in negotiating the ceasefire. But Trump has doubled down on his claim, mentioning more than 30 times that he brokered peace.

Growing US-Pakistan ties

After the ceasefire between India and Pakistan in May, Trump hosted Pakistan’s army chief, Asim Munir, at the White House. Never before had a US president hosted a Pakistani military boss who was not also the head of state.

That meeting underscored a growing warmth between Washington and Islamabad after years of tense ties, with US military officials crediting Pakistan with helping them capture wanted “terrorists”.

The government of Pakistan also officially endorsed Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize for “recognition of his decisive diplomatic intervention and pivotal leadership during the recent India-Pakistan crisis”.

A day after meeting Munir, Trump called Modi a “fantastic man”, but added that Munir was “extremely influential” in bringing about the ceasefire.

“I love Pakistan,” Trump said, and repeated: “I stopped the war between Pakistan and India.”

As Trump targeted India in his latest tariff assault, he took to his Truth Social platform to reveal that he had concluded a deal with Pakistan, in which they would work together on developing oil reserves. “Who knows, maybe they’ll be selling Oil to India some day!” he wrote.

Later, the US imposed a 19 percent tariff on imports from Pakistan, which Islamabad hailed as “balanced and forward-looking”.

Big Tech hiring, deportation

Days before Modi visited Trump in February, visuals emerged of Indian citizens in the US, shackled in chains, parading towards a US military aircraft, prompting anger in India over the treatment of its nationals.

Returnees, immigrants without documents to stay in the US, described being chained throughout the flight to India, unable to move for nearly 40 hours. Like trade, the issue of deportation has been at the centre of Trump’s re-election campaign.

And it is not just undocumented migrants.

After assuming the presidency, Trump’s administration has also come under pressure from the president’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) base to crack down on H1B work visas, nearly 72 percent of which go to Indians.

Last month, speaking at an artificial intelligence summit in Washington, DC, Trump singled out tech giants like Google, Microsoft and Apple for hiring workers from India. Trump declared, “The days of hiring workers in India are over”, and urged companies to prioritise jobs for Americans and disconnect from outsourcing models tied to India and China.

What’s the latest spark in US-India tensions?

Russia’s war on Ukraine has emerged as the latest trigger, as Trump tried to push Putin into accepting a ceasefire.

On Monday, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform that “India is not only buying massive amounts of Russian Oil, they are then, for much of the Oil purchased, selling it on the Open Market for big profits”.

Earlier, Stephen Miller, the deputy chief of staff at the White House and one of the US president’s most influential aides, linked India’s buying of Russian crude to financing Moscow’s war in Ukraine.

“What [Trump] said very clearly is that it is not acceptable for India to continue financing this war by purchasing the oil from Russia,” said Miller.

“People will be shocked to learn that India is basically tied with China in purchasing Russian oil. That’s an astonishing fact,” Miller told Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures.

India imports nearly 2 million barrels of crude oil per day from Russia, making it the second-largest purchaser of Russian oil after China. Russia also tops the list of India’s arms suppliers.

How has India reacted to Trump?

On Monday, India’s Ministry of External Affairs responded sharply, calling the US’s targeting of New Delhi over the buying of Russian oil “unjustified and unreasonable”.

It accused the West of double standards, pointing out how Europe traded more with Russia in 2024 than India did, and how the US continues to import chemicals and fertilisers from Russia.

It also said that the US has “actively encouraged” it to buy Russian oil, so that global crude prices would stay under control while the West could reduce its dependence on Russian energy.

“India will take all necessary measures to safeguard its national interests and economic security,” the statement concluded.

Will India stop buying Russian oil to please Trump?

That is very unlikely, experts say.

India has historically — since independence from Britain in 1947 — cherished its strategic autonomy, including during the Cold War, when it stayed non-aligned. Since the end of the Cold War, it has deepened strategic and military ties with the US while maintaining its traditional friendship with Russia.

“Trump is trying to wean India off its strategic autonomy policy by going after its ties with Russia and membership in BRICS,” Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center in Washington, DC, told Al Jazeera, referring to the Trump’s threats of higher tariffs against members of the bloc that includes several leading nations of the Global South.

“But Delhi is not about to jettison this policy in the face of Trump’s pressure. On the contrary, I expect it to double down.”

Late on Tuesday, India’s National Security Adviser Ajit Doval landed in Moscow. Minister of External Affairs S Jaishankar is expected to visit Russia later this month. And New Delhi has confirmed that Putin will be visiting India later this year, for the first time since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

In recent weeks, India has also indicated that it is open to reviving a trilateral grouping including Russia and China, the West’s two big rivals.

“Can the US or Europe give up their strategic autonomy?” asked Jayati Ghosh, economics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “India has more people than both of them put together. It is absurd to even think that India can give up that,” she told Al Jazeera.

What does this mean for future of US-India relationship?

Echoing Dhar, the economist, Kugelman said that US-India relations have “sunk to their lowest level during the last two decades of strategic partnership”, which began taking shape in the early years of the 21st century.

Non-alignment with foreign governments “remains a critical component of India’s foreign policy”, said Kugelman, adding that he expects that to continue.

And because “India maintained this balance after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Trump is penalising [New Delhi] for trying to maintain the balance [between US and Russia],” he said. “[That’s] something that the Biden administration never did,” he added, referring to the previous administration of US President Joe Biden.

Trigunayat, the former diplomat, said that “strategic autonomy for India is more important now than ever. India, with the world’s largest population, has its own approach to strategic autonomy that’s in the DNA of Indian foreign policy.”

In the longer run, Kugelman said that New Delhi will hope that Trump’s ire will eventually blow over – a likely case if Russia agrees to stop fighting in Ukraine.

“In that sense, India may look to redouble efforts to press Putin to end the war,” said Kugelman, “because for now, Trump appears to be taking out his frustration with Putin on India”.

June 5 (UPI) — President Donald Trump and former Department of Government Efficiency Director Elon Musk are slinging accusations after an apparent end to their short-lived friendship.

Trump on Thursday accused Musk of going “crazy” after the president canceled the federal electric vehicle mandate imposed by the Biden administration.

“I took away his EV mandate that forced everyone to buy electric cars that nobody else wanted,” Trump said in a Truth Social post on Thursday. “He just went crazy!”

Trump also has threatened to end all government contracts with the Musk-founded Tesla and suggested that would be a fast way to reduce government spending.

The president’s threat likely resonated with investors as Tesla share prices declined by more than 14% on Thursday and shed $152 billion in value from the EV maker.

Trump said he asked Musk to leave his advisory position with DOGE, although Musk was scheduled to exit the position at the end of May.

Musk earlier said Trump would not have won the Nov. 5 election without his help.

He contributed an estimated $250 million to Trump’s campaign effort.

“Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate,” Musk said Thursday morning in a post on X.

Musk has criticized the proposed “one big, beautiful” federal government budget bill as increasing the nation’s debt and negating his work with DOGE.

The entrepreneur opposes the spending bill that the House has passed and is before the Senate because it removed tax credits and subsidies for buying EVs, Trump claimed.

“I don’t mind Elon turning against me, but he should have done that months ago,” Trump said in a subsequent Truth Social post on Thursday afternoon.

“This is one of the greatest bills ever presented to Congress,” he continued. “It’s a record cut in expenses, $1.6 trillion dollars, and the biggest tax cut ever given.”

If the measure is not passed, Trump said it will trigger a 68% tax increase, “and things far worse than that.”

The president said the “easiest way to save money … is to terminate Elon’s governmental subsidies and contracts” with Tesla.

Later on Thursday, Musk in an X post said it is “time to drop the really big bomb” on the president.

Trump “is in the Epstein files,” Musk said. “That is the real reason they have not been made public.”

Musk did not say in what context Trump allegedly appears in the Epstein files, but ended his post with: “Have a nice day, DJT!”

He made a subsequent post that asks: “Is it time to create a new political party in America that actually represents the 80% in the middle?”

Trump and Musk were very close during the first four months of the Trump administration and often appeared together at high-profile events.