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The great battle to win the most valuable football club in the world

2023-05-16T10:50:37.151Z

Highlights: Manchester United is the most valued football club in the world according to Forbes magazine. The Glazers, American businessmen who own the Tampa Bay Buccaneers football franchise and also owners of Manchester United since 2005, revealed at the end of 2022 their intention to sell 69% of the shares of the British club. The first is Sir Jim Ratcliffe, the richest man in the UK. The other is Sheikh Jassim of Qatar, a member of the Qatari royal family that manages Paris Saint-Germain and Germain.


The owner of Manchester United will be a millionaire whose companies pollute the environment or another Qatari royalty


There is a shock in the heart of the fan of Manchester United, the most valued football club in the world according to Forbes magazine and only behind the Dallas Cowboys (American football) and New York Yankees (baseball) if you take into account any sport. After years of battling, inside and outside their historic stadium at Old Trafford, against the owners Avram and Joel Glazer (who replaced Malcolm, who died in 2014), they are forced to accept one of the two purchase offers they have on the table and that come to be one very bad and the other much worse. There is no consensus on which is one and which is the other, however, and that is part of the tear.

The Glazers, American businessmen who own the Tampa Bay Buccaneers football franchise and also owners of Manchester United since 2005, revealed at the end of 2022 their intention to sell 69% of the shares of the British club. They have asked for a third round of offers whose unspecified limit is the end of April, and rumors or interested leaks in the British economic media suggest the figure of six billion euros as the desired one to give their approval. It would be a record in the world of sports.

In previous rounds, the two contenders that are presumed definitive have already been presented. (A third in discord, Finnish millionaire Thomas Zilliacus, appeared and disappeared from the map amid accusations of "farce" for the process.) The first is Sir Jim Ratcliffe, the richest man in the UK. He is the favorite of Michael Crick, subscriber ('season ticket holder' they call it in England and they say it with pomp) of United for 40 years, historical journalist who was in the founding team of Channel 4 and who, while serving as political correspondent of the famous BBC Newsnight program, created the movement Shareholders United Against Murdoch (United Shareholders Against Murdoch) to paralyze, successfully but not without suffering, the purchase of his club by millionaire Rupert Murdoch in the 1998–99 season.

But it is his favorite in the way one poison is preferred to another. "I'm nervous," he says now. "I guess I'd rather Ratcliffe win. He was born a couple of miles from Newton Heath, where the club was founded [in 1878, as Newton Heath LYR Football Club] and I know from a friend who worked very close to him that he is always talking about Manchester United. But then you have this whole history of fighting unions, of bad business practices, of being against green taxes, in favor of Brexit, of taking over companies and cutting money from them and making a profit from them, which is what businessmen do. Capitalism, wow. That makes me very nervous, because the Glazers have already taken a lot of money from United."

Jim Ratcliffe during a press conference in Yorkshire in May 2019. Martin Rickett (Getty)

What he speaks in the privacy of Manchester United is not a minor detail and reassures a good part of the followers of the red devils. Since Ratcliffe's interest in buying the club was known, criticism, alarms and pressures of all kinds against him did not cease, not the least being the fact that the English millionaire is a subscriber of Chelsea and tried to buy the club last year, when, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Roman Abramovich was forced to sell it. Meanwhile, environmental activists have been denouncing for years the leading role of their company, INEOS, the petrochemical giant, in the production of plastic, fossil fuels and toxic pesticides. And, finally, his investment in United is doubted since he only wants to take 69% of the shares of the club, which are those that the Glazers have, and does not commit to take charge of the immense accumulated debt.

Scott Patterson, a Manchester native who has been a subscriber since childhood, one of the club's most reputable tweeters today and author of the TheRepublikofMancunia.com talk page: "United owe £969.6 million in a combination of gross debt, bank loans and unpaid transfer rates. So we can't afford to get too fussy about choosing new owners."

Taking charge of that debt is the main claim of the other candidate: Sheikh Jassim, president of Qatar Islamic Bank, one of the largest in the Middle East, a member of the Qatari royal family that already manages Paris Saint Germain and has just taken over an important part of the Portuguese Sporting de Braga, and a man of unlimited wealth. This last part is more attractive for a part of the fans of Manchester United, which in recent years has seen how its neighbor Manchester City, once hardly rival, has overtaken them as the main team in the city and the country thanks to investments from Abu Dhabi. But, of course, it's about Qatar and all that that implies in terms of human rights, just to point out the most obvious.

Jassim, in addition, would like 100% of the club's shares. Something that is not simple nor would it be fast. The Glazers, who bought the majority stake in the club in 2005, now own 69% of the shares, which they sell. To get the remaining 31%, Sheikh Jassim would need time to convince the rest of the small shareholders, if he succeeds, which could cause the purchase process to take a long time or even never come to completion.

But the importance of the economic issue, which obviously occupies and worries the follower of the English team, risks overshadowing the ethical and moral implications of an operation that would happen 25 years after United fans organized so that Rupert Murdoch did not take over his club. What has changed? Among other things, that sporting successes, then common (that same season United ended up winning the Premier League, the FA Cup and the Champions League), are now scarce, and that it is also the neighboring Manchester City that stars in them.

Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani, in June 2013.

Samuel Luckhurst, Manchester United correspondent for the Manchester Evening News, said: "Manchester City's success is difficult for the United fan to assimilate, but from their point of view it is a dirty success and a case of sportswashing. Many United supporters would rather maintain the moral standard than become a club-state."

But who are the United fans? The 75,000 that fit at Old Trafford? The rest of the club's supporters in Greater Manchester? All British? Or the hundreds of millions who, with avatars of Eric Cantona, red devils or variations of the shield connect to social networks from Buenos Aires, Rabat, Cairo or, of course, Qatar? Which ones matter?

"There's a huge difference between the point of view of fans who come to Old Trafford and those who are online," says Scott Patterson, who has one foot in both worlds and knows what he's talking about. "An example: last season Michael Rashford [the local star] was very poor, but in the stadium I did not find a single person who did not support him or who did not expect him to recover his previous form. On the other hand, on social networks there were many fans asking for its sale, which blew my mind."

For Patterson, this has to do with why each became a United supporter. "It's my home team, my whole family supports United and has done so for generations. My father went to Old Trafford when the team was in Division 2 in the seventies, and his lived through the golden age of the Busby Babes and the Munich air disaster. For people who came to United for success only, it makes more sense to accept any owner who can bring them back, while the home fans care about many other things besides winning trophies. But we love that too, obviously."

Samuel Luckhurst agrees with Patterson: "Online fans who are primarily concerned about signings and are more impressionable associate Qatar with a bottomless pit full of money. Instead, most supporters who go to Old Trafford, use its facilities and care about retaining United's working-class roots would prefer it to Sir Jim Ratcliffe who bought the club."

While it is true that the lack of ethical suitability of Manchester United becoming a Qatari club-state has occupied a respectable number of pages in the British media, especially in those of ideological orientation more to the left, it is equally true that there is no unanimity and that there are too many greys, too many messages in favor of Qatar between the lines, sometimes without any disguise.

Luckhurst explains how "some journalists who travelled to Qatar to cover the World Cup established contacts with people who are now giving them news or updates regarding Sheikh Jassim's interest in buying United, and they faithfully reproduce what they tell them in their articles. The perception is skewed also due to the considerable contingent of online followers who are in favor of Qatari control. There are media outlets that publish updates on Qatar just because they know it's going to pay for them online."

A couple of recent examples. In the last week of March, when both Sir Jim Ratcliffe and Sheikh Jassim failed to deliver their new proposals to the Glazers on time (an issue that was later resolved), the presenter of a Manchester United news outlet with a huge online following claimed, with obvious concern, that if Qatar failed to buy Manchester United it would buy another Premier League club. with a double negative effect: United would run out of millions and, in addition, lose them to a rival. They are news manufactured directly on social networks that fulfill their role of running like wildfire and guiding opinion. In the same week, two banners appeared at Carrington's training camp. One said "Glazers out", which is nothing new; but, next to it, the other said "Welcome Qatar". The image also went viral on social networks instantly, generating thousands of positive interactions.

The Qatari royal family, which has ruled their country for more than 150 years, invests in the UK through the sovereign wealth fund Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) and owns, according to an audit carried out by The Observer at the end of 2022, real estate worth 10,000 million pounds; Data released by the British government in March 2023 indicate that trade between the United Kingdom and Qatar rose in the last financial year to 12.100 billion pounds. In addition, Qatar has important assets in relevant British companies such as British Airways, Sainsbury's, Barclays or Harrods. That is, it is not logical to think that they will let their offer for Manchester United swim unaccompanied in the waters of British public opinion.

The Guardian published in December 2022 an article by Jim Waterson about how British journalists who denounced the treatment of migrant workers building World Cup stadiums did not receive calls from Qatar to back down their accusations, but received them from Britons such as George Pascoe-Watson, former political editor of The Sun. which offered views more appropriate to Qatar's interests. The article explained how British PR and lobbying firms, such as Portland (of which Pascoe-Watson is a senior partner), were making a lot of money working for Qatar.

The founder of Portland is Tim Allan. Allan, a former deputy to Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair's communications director, was, coincidentally, BSkyB's communications director when Rupert Murdoch tried to buy Manchester United through its television operator in 1998. When the operation had already been derailed, Allan wrote in The Guardian on April 12, 1999: "The emotional arguments against the deal have been provided by a well-organized campaign team, which the BBC has inexplicably allowed to be led by one of its journalists, Michael Crick." 25 years later, Crick laughs at the memory. Although the subsequent grimace indicates that he knows that this time is different.

Aerial image of Manchester United's stadium, Old Trafford. Getty Agency (Visionhaus/Getty Images)

Old Trafford fans like Scott Patterson attend this battle of reputations with sadness, resignation and even a hint of anger because who else who less intuits how everything will end. "The British media is totally complicit. If they had supported our protests [against the Glazers] or, at least, had not laughed at them for 18 years, maybe we would not be in this situation now. It is very hypocritical that they now write outraged articles about potentially unacceptable buyers. Where have those items been in the last 18 years?"

Against all this, Sir Jim Ratcliffe appeals to the soul of fans like Patterson or Crick, to tradition. "We want a Manchester United anchored in its proud history and its roots in the northwest of England, for Manchester United to be Manchester again," he said in an interview with The Times. Ratcliffe thus addresses the 75,000 fans who attend Old Trafford rather than the totality of millions of fans scattered around the world to whom Sheikh Jassim appeals.

But it is not a simple dilemma between money and ethics, as we have already seen. The great debt, the outdated facilities that threaten to turn the club into inoperative in the market and the feeling of having reached an unsolvable crossroads condition the mood of the follower. As Michael Crick says: "Many United fans are against Sheikh Jassim in either scenario, but the ethical relaxation of some fans about the type of person they want to run the club is due to necessity. The lack of certainty in the future, especially because of the debt, will make many accept anything from almost anyone as long as they make it disappear."

"We don't really need Qatar's money to compete," says Scott Patterson. "We already generate enough. As long as United are allowed to spend their own money, continue to develop world-class talent in our academy as we have always done, and have qualified people making the decisions, we can compete." However, Patterson is not able to prefer either of the two potential buyers: "Neither of them is to my taste. I guess my ideal buyer would be someone with Ratcliffe's connection to the club and the Qataris' intention to settle the debt and remodel the stadium. But it doesn't seem to exist, really."

Michael Crick does prefer to opt for Ratcliffe, although he recalls that he is "very nervous about the prospect". Do you sometimes wish Manchester United hadn't been such a globally successful club? "No," he replies without hesitation. "Not really. Over the years, many of our best players have come out of Manchester. Sometimes from the backyard next door. We have also been a club that has grown by participating in European competitions. That combination has been a success. More an attractive attacking game. That's the formula." And he says with a feigned illusion but not entirely false, as if just by throwing the idea in the air he already bought tickets so that it could materialize: "Ideally, we would be the followers who own the club and we would look for a way to organize ourselves." It takes three seconds for that idea to fall to the ground without remedy: "But it's too late. I don't think we can do anything anymore."

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2023-05-16

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