The final deadline for bids to buy Manchester United passed on Friday night. Although in fairness, it feels barely more final than the first two deadlines that passed in February and March. Given the looseness with which the Glazers appear to regard deadlines, (“mufc bid proposal FINAL FINAL USE THIS.docx”) it is possible that when they finally take their leave of the club a lucrative career in column-writing awaits them.
And so to the latest and hopefully the last round of a protracted charade that has come to resemble a reality television show in which viewers are sadly unable to vote off any of the protagonists. Indeed for a club so keen to recast itself as a global media brand you only wonder whether a little television jeopardy might have enlivened the process. Sheikh Jassim, mysterious son of the former prime minister of Qatar, your fellow contestants have voted you into the Hideaway for the night. Oh, you’re already there. As you were, then.
For the two suitors, Sheikh Jassim and Sir Jim Ratcliffe, the moment of truth is almost at hand, a prospect that when you consider the amount of rumour, obfuscation, gossip and unsubstantiated braggadocio that has characterised the entire circus, is a prospect that should terrify both of them. For months, abetted by a handy menagerie of client journalists, the pair have been able to campaign and sell their vision in public while barely having to utter a word on the record or engage with fan groups.
Ratcliffe, for his part, has been keen to play up his ties with the north-west, a region so close to his heart he now lives in Monaco. His pitch, which involves “making Manchester United the number one club in the world again”, has unmistakable echoes of his pledge, when he took over Nice in 2019, to “take the club from strength to strength”. And if you define strength as “seventh in Ligue 1” and strength as “ninth in Ligue 1, but with Ross Barkley”, then he has certainly made good on his promise.
By contrast, Sheikh Jassim is at this stage little more than a name, a potted internet biography. His PR team are unable even to confirm his age. This is, of course, very much in keeping with Qatar’s broader footballing strategy: deflect, disinform, explain as little as possible. What experience do you have of running a sporting business? What assurances can you offer of your funds, your personal qualities, your moral probity? And just how does a Qatari bank manager with no connection whatsoever to the state of Qatar manage to raise £6bn?
As ever, anyone with the basic curiosity to ask these questions is quickly labelled a racist, a Ratcliffe shill, a vicious United-hater who wants Scott McTominay in midfield for the next 15 years. And this is perhaps the most arresting aspect of the whole affair. Faced with the invidious choice of the Glazers in perpetuity, Ratcliffe in perpetuity or the Magical Mystery Box, a significant proportion of United fans – perhaps even a majority – have made their preference clear. The box! The box! The one with Jude Bellingham and the human rights abuses!
“We want our club back,” read the many protest banners billowing across Manchester on Sunday afternoon as United fans carried out their latest protest. “Full sale only”, was another common refrain: a rejection of Ratcliffe’s (rumoured) plan to buy only a majority stake in the club. The eagle-eyed among you may have spotted the slight inconsistency in the messaging. The only bidders currently offering a “full sale” are the Qataris: those famous delegators of power, men of the people. Alas, were you to put the phrase “50+1” to Sheikh Jassim, he would probably ask what Alejandro Garnacho’s shirt number has to do with any of this.
It’s hard to pin too much blame on United fans here. Like many of us in this deeply corrupted sport they are not simply powerless but so deeply embedded in the transfer-industrial complex that they are essentially participants. In the same way that voters are drawn to billionaire politicians because of the fantasy that they are somehow incorruptible, there is a strand of fan that actively craves the illiberal state benefactor on the basis that they will be unencumbered by outdated impulses like turning a profit. Debase us. Sportswash us. But do sign us Victor Osimhen while you’re at it.
And so, choose your character: the billionaire head of a petrochemicals company, or the billionaire avatar who won’t tell us his age but is definitely going to open the club up to its people. In a saner world it would be possible to decry the hawking around of this 145-year-old Manchester institution as if were a piece of knock-off jewellery, or the fact that Manchester City are about to win their fifth title in six years while being investigated for cheating, or the fact that the World Cup is expanding and the Champions League is expanding and the rich are getting richer and nobody who matters really has a say in any of it.
But there would be a kind of tragic nostalgia at work there, an invocation of a world that no longer exists. For all its appeals to community, beneficence and common joy, this sport now belongs to the despots and the autocrats, the speculators and the sovereign wealth funds. There is a kind of endgame moment brewing here. Some of us are going to have to pick a side. And if the sordid saga of the United sale serves any purpose, it is to bring that moment of reckoning a few notches closer.
• This article was amended on 4 May 2023 to remove a term which is not in accordance with our style guidelines.
