May 12th, 2005
The Beautiful Game or The Love of Money?
As a lifelong Manchester United fan, I feel pretty much the way most Man U fans feel tonight upon hearing that Malcolm Glazer has substantially strengthened his sweaty grip on United. He has bought the 28.7% chunk of shares formerly owned by JP McManus and John Magnier and now holds about 63% of the club’s shares. If he manages to hike this up to 75% he can force the other shareholders to sell their shares to him. If he ups it to 90% he can get rid of the rest of the shareholders and run it as a private company. The bid is in the region of 1.5 billion euro and handily enough, he can absorb three million quid’s worth of his debt into this. Still, he can probably clear that by charging extortionate prices for tickets, merchandise and sell any good players he can make a few quid on.
He’s never even been to Old Trafford but then perhaps he really is a big sports fan, because in US, he’s seen in a very different. When he bought in to The Tampa Bay Buccaneers he pumped money into them, bought lots of players, hired a decent coach and they won the Superbowl a couple of years later. Maybe he could be the Roman Abramovich of United? I doubt it very much and am inclined to think that this is a bad thing for United, for fans and for football.
If you’re feeling a smidge teary about it, cheer yourself up with this.
I wonder if Glazer made all his money from Toy Story?