A billionaire bought a piece of Manchester United. Now he has to fix it.
The process was six months old and had already begun to work on Jim Ratcliffe, the British billionaire, when he first brought out the champagne to toast his purchase of Manchester United. But even that celebration, at the Monaco Grand Prix in May, proved premature.
There was no agreement. Not yet.
It will never be easy to make one. This was largely because any potential sale of United presented a tantalizing marriage of money, power and history: Mr Ratcliffe, the wealthy chairman of INEOS, the petrochemical giant, had supported Manchester United since he was a boy. The most decorated club in English football, United were one of the most iconic brands in global sport. And the Premier League, to which it belonged, was the richest football league in the world.
What followed was an auction as unpredictable and chaotic as some of Manchester United's most memorable games. The news media breathlessly followed the momentum swings between Mr. Ratcliffe's bid and a rival bid led by a little-known Qatari sheikh.
United fans, eager to see their club shake off its unpopular owners, the Florida-based Glazer family, devoured it all. But while the negotiations generated headlines, discussions and whispers for months, they produced no sales.
Mr Ratcliffe eventually won. Kind of.
On December 26, the Glazers announced that they had done so agreed to sell 25 percent of United to Mr. Ratcliffe, one of the richest men in the world. The price – more than $1.5 billion – bought a curious arrangement under which Mr Ratcliffe, the new minority owner, would take day-to-day control of the club's football operations. The deal was confirmed on Tuesday evening.
When Mr Ratcliffe set out his views on Wednesday, newspapers and websites eagerly grabbed headlines new players, old rivals And stadium plans. But listening more closely to his words, it became apparent that the grueling sales process might have been the easy part. Reviving United – a trophy-winning machine from a decade ago that has been reduced to something closer to a punchline in recent seasons – will likely be a years-long process, he warned.
“It's not a light switch,” Mr. Ratcliffe said. “It's not things like that that change overnight.”
Mr Ratcliffe talked about how United, under his leadership, would adopt a football-first mentality, a clear attempt to differentiate his focus from that of the Glazers, whose stewardship has helped make United a commercial cash machine, but a spluttering, confusing disappointment. on the field.
Continued failure, Mr. Ratcliffe said, will “start to degrade the brand if you're not careful.”
He was less clear about how his investment, as a minority shareholder, will work in practice when it comes to major decisions, saying only that he had built a relationship with Joel and Avram Glazer, the two Glazer family members most involved in United. during what he described as a “rocky” sales process.
“As long as we do the right things, I'm sure the relationship will go very well,” Mr Ratcliffe said.
The delay in completing his investment was not due to the Glazers in any case, he said, but rather to a set of circumstances including United's independent directors, hedge funds that owned some of the Manchester United shares that will remain listed on the New York Stock. Exchange, U.S. financial regulators and a Qatari group whose presence seemed to do little more than drive up the price.
At one point, Mr. Ratcliffe joked on Wednesday that he wasn't even sure the little-known sheikh, billed as the figurehead of the Qatari bid, actually existed.
His interest, he emphasized, was genuine. He recalled growing up in a family divided along tribal lines, with one half focused on the red of United and the other half on the light blue of his city rivals, Manchester City.
For much of Mr. Ratcliffe's life, that hasn't really been a rivalry. But now City are the pre-eminent team in football, a serial winner of the English Premier League and the champions of Europe. And in a meandering hour with reporters, it was striking how often the new United owner kept returning to the success enjoyed at the other end of Manchester.
“There's nothing I'd like more than to knock them both off their spots,” Ratcliffe said of City and another recently successful United rival, Liverpool.
For fans, the phrase was reminiscent of a piece of club folklore, having once been used in reference to Liverpool by Alex Ferguson, the coach who would deliver on what he promised during two trophy-collecting decades at United.
“They have been in a good place for a while and there are things we can learn from both,” Ratcliffe said of City and Liverpool.
“I have a lot of respect for them,” he added. “But they are still the enemy.”
White gentleman Ratcliffe left little doubt that he intends to bring United back success as quickly as possible. He is also hampered by the rules of the Premier League. The collapse in United's performance coincided with one of the biggest talent acquisitions in history, and untangling that profligacy has left the club poorly positioned to meet the league's spending limits.
That means any radical restructuring efforts to address selection will be limited for now. “There is no doubt that history will influence this summer period,” he said.
Drawing up a plan for United's stadium might be more feasible: either a £1 billion ($1.27 billion) renovation of the current Old Trafford, or – Mr Ratcliffe's preference – a new-build something even bigger and requiring public investment, but acting as a facility that could serve the whole of the North of England.
By invoking Manchester's history as a driving force in the Industrial Revolution and claiming that British governments have favored investment in London and the south of the country, Mr Ratcliffe appeared to be making the case for some sort of narrative for historical errors.
But in his case, it would be one that would also benefit a tax exile billionaire now living a life of luxury in Monte Carlo.
“I paid my taxes in Britain for 65 years,” he said. “And when I reached retirement age, I went down to enjoy the sun. I have no problem with that, I'm afraid.”