The takeover of Manchester United continues at the pace to which we have become accustomed, which is to say it is so slow that it might be quicker if interested parties were to negotiate for each Old Trafford seat individually and then move on to the teacups in the directors’ lounge.
The Qataris are out at last – or so the message goes. If it is a negotiating tactic then it feels like a last roll of the dice from the mysterious Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad Al Thani, although there always seems to be one last move in this game. Many now would not be surprised if it were not over by the first quarter of the 21st century.
It was, back in January, to be a full sale of the club too, although that has also fallen by the wayside. At the heart of it is the greed of the Glazer family, who used to perpetrate the fiction they were no more than careful custodians of the club. They stopped trying to play that tune long ago. Having milked the club to finance their 18 years in power, with some £1.1 billion of revenue used to pay down loans as well as interest, fees and dividends, the allegation from the Qatari side is that the Glazers want more than double the current stock market valuation of $3.2 billion (£2.7 billion).
It is a stupendous sum – and while they find someone prepared to pay it, you have to wonder what happens to United. It is a great club desperately in need of reinvention. The Glazer years have worn it away until now it feels like it is stuck in a moment in time with a dwindling power in the transfer market and a stadium and training ground infrastructure that is outdated. Joel Glazer last year defended United’s debt position, saying it was not unusual for clubs of their size especially after the drop in revenue during the pandemic.
Of course, not every mistake has been the Glazers’ alone, but they have overseen the mediocrity of the past 10 years, and it is their appointments in positions of leadership who have taken United there. The shrewdest owners pick the right people and step back to watch the club thrive from a distance. The Glazers just step back to watch from a distance.
Hard to assess the moves of Sheikh Jassim, a man about whom we know so little that only one official picture of him exists and no meaningful interviews. He has emerged from that Gulf state, one of the wealthiest nations in the history of human civilisation, with the usual cloak of secrecy. One that permits little knowledge of past achievement or previous strategy.
Is this the usual tactic for him in negotiations? Did his father Sheikh Hamad, perhaps the most formidable shopper London has ever known, deploy a similar approach as he acquired assets all over the city? Certainly one might find alternatives when negotiating for Harrods, Canary Wharf property or Park Lane hotels. The problem for his son is that there is only one Manchester United and it becomes available only once in every generation.
If we are to take Sheikh Jassim at his word that he has left the table, then all roads point to Sir Jim Ratcliffe. He began his run in January with an intention to buy all of United, and in the 10 months since then that option now is 25 per cent of United. Accompanying it is the certainty that this destabilising saga will continue in one way or another as the Glazers sell it off piece by piece. It also means more of the Glazers, with the possibility that their involvement as majority shareholder at the club may pass two decades.
What kind of effect Ratcliffe might have as a junior partner is not yet clear. The structure of shares, between those Class A variety sold to investors and the Class B owned exclusively by the six Glazer siblings, is a complicating factor. United’s corporate constitution, between the Glazers and the rest of the shareholders, will have to be reimagined to give Ratcliffe 25 per cent of the influence of the family.
What may recommend him above all else to United fans is that he has pursued his goal as enthusiastically as possible.
The most transformative Premier League takeovers in recent history – putting aside whether one supports the notion of nation-state clubs or the Russian oligarch that preceded them all – have been completed with one bite. Those decisive moves have washed away the ill-feeling towards former regimes, and let loose new ideas and new investment. Whatever plans Ratcliffe might have for United, they can hardly be implemented instantaneously. The Glazers are anything but predictable.
On Ratcliffe goes nonetheless, and perhaps with no rival there will be no possibility that the Glazers can force the price up or dictate terms. United need change quickly – although of all the outcomes, the speed of that change seems the least likely.
