Red Star Belgrade souvenir sold as controversy rages..

A Red Star Belgrade souvenir given to all United players at a banquet following the Busby Babes last game prior to the Munich air disaster has been sold at auction for over four times its reserve price for £4,100. The unknown seller who was given the souvenir as a 50th birtday present by his father, who it is claimed, found the it some four to six weeks later a quarter of a mile from the wreckage, says he is dismayed that some people have attacked his father over the sale.

Auctioneer William Andrews defended the sale, saying: "I am very happy with the history of the plate.

"The owner is a bit dismayed that people have attacked his father but it hasn't changed his outlook one bit.

"He is going to make a donation of a percentage of the sale of the plate either to a charity of Manchester United's choice or even to go to local schools so they can buy tickets for local school children to go round the Manchester United museum."

For their part United have said that they would have liked to have been offered the souvenir for display in the club museum.

Reds fans will be hoping that the msytery buyer at auction held at Ludlow Racecourse does the right thing and donates it to the club.


BBC news tv report from 1958 following the crash

Sold to the highest bidder.

Charlton upset at sale

We want our Red Star Belgrade plaque back...

After close on forty years of supporting the Red's, it still amazes me how some Manchester City fans are so bitter and twisted where the subject of anything to do with United is concerned.

Take for instance the latest revelation that a plaque given to United by Red Star Belgrade at a banquet directly after the game in February 1958 has suddenly re-surfaced and is being auctioned.

This plaque disappeared after the fateful crash a day later. It is now up for auction, after, it would appear, one of the rescue team, a British Aid worker, "retrieved" the plaque from the smouldering wreckage, and for reasons best known to himself, decided to take it home and keep it hidden for 50 years.

After the understandable outrage from Old Trafford some blues have contacted the Manchester Evening News with their usual anti-United bile.

One City fan has written in claiming that United have "exploited" the crash for 50 years. Another one suggests that United want the plaque back so they can display it in the museum and profit from extra admission charges. Bizarrely, one even condones the auction and profiteering of a crime for the simple reason United are not a British owned club.

Let me retort. It doesn't matter if your team is owned by a family of introverted American businessmen, a Russian gangster or even a former prime minister of an Oriental backwater with a dodgy Human Rights record. Something of ours was stolen, it doesn't matter how long ago - we want it back.

What cannot be disputed is the fact that whoever the dispicable person was who stole the plaque they were guilty of one of the most heinous acts of looting. What would be made of a fireman who came into a house to extinguish a blaze and helped himself to a family airloom?

There is also no doubt about the real owners of the plaque - it belongs to
Manchester United and should be returned immediately. End of story.

I feel saddened that some of these City fans still refer to us as "Munich's" and chant obnoxious and disgraceful songs about the disaster at derby games. Have they no idea that one of their greatest ever players, Frank Swift, also perished in the 1958 Munich air-crash disaster?

It's a sad indictment of our society when, just because of the hatred born out of seething jealousy, some of these imbeciles have nurtured about our club, they actually take the time and effort to write (I'm also surprised that some of them can) to a newspaper condoning an abhorrent criminal act while having pathetic little digs at United.

Will they ever learn?

PeteBug.