Manchester United’s U.S. owner leaves fans seeing red
Who says religion is dead in Britain?
This industrial city is full of true believers who pack their chosen temples, sing their anthems and stone the occasional heretic. What does it matter that the houses of worship are sports stadiums, the saints (and sinners) are strapping lads in jerseys and shorts, and followers live and die by goals and penalty kicks?
But there’s trouble in paradise, at least for fans of Manchester United, the world-famous team that’s been home to stars such as Cristiano Ronaldo.
Man United, or just plain United to the faithful, is one of the richest, most successful squads in English history, with scads of trophies to its name. It’s a global brand whose enormous reach can be seen in the red jerseys worn by admirers from Johannesburg to Japan. Ticket sales, tacky memorabilia and victories on the field keep the revenue and the recognition rolling in.
Yet the franchise is drowning in debts exceeding $1 billion. Yes, that’s billion with a B, as in “Beckham,” who got his start here, bending it like no one else. Or as in “bonds,” which the club issued in desperation last week -- $800 million worth -- to try to claw itself out of its hole.
And B as in “bloody Yanks,” who are the ones that many, if not most, of United’s fans blame for the unholy mess their beloved team has gotten into.
They curse the name of Malcolm Glazer, the American processed-foods tycoon and owner of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who engineered a highly leveraged buyout of Man United in 2005, taking it off the stock market and turning it into a private trophy, albeit one saddled with debt.
That was insult enough for the many fans who had bought shares in the team out of a fierce sense of loyalty and a desire to own a personal stake, however small, in the club.
Now there’s injury too.
Even as United founders financially, if not in the standings, its cross-town rival, Manchester City, is on the ascent. Like Man United, City has a relatively new foreign owner. But he’s an oil sheik from Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, who has been showering the team with cash, enough for it to poach star Argentine striker Carlos Tevez last year from -- who else -- United.
Just to rub it in, Tevez scored two goals during City’s shocking 2-1 win over United last week in the Carling Cup tournament. United avenged the loss Wednesday with a 3-1 victory that earned it a spot in the cup finals.
Still, City supporters, no less fanatical than their United counterparts, can barely keep from crowing as their Persian Gulf petrodollars take it to American financing.
“The arrogance that Manchester United as a football club and their supporters have shown over the years -- it’s come back to bite them in the bottom,” Kevin Parker, a die-hard City man for nearly 40 years, said gleefully. “Nobody will really be crying over what’s happening to Manchester United.”
Except, that is, for United fans, who glumly recognize the change in fortunes (literally).
“Manchester United at the moment is like an old tractor dragging a dead weight behind it -- 760 million pounds in debt,” said Liam Bradford, who helps edit a United fanzine. “Man City is like a brand-new tractor going on rocket fuel.”
Tension between devotees of the two sides has been especially ugly as they face off in the Carling Cup, a tournament involving 92 English soccer teams. And as in all such wars of religion that have racked this island nation, people have gotten hurt.
In last week’s matchup at City’s stadium, someone in the stands lobbed a lighter at United player Patrice Evra. Police also confiscated other potential projectiles from fans -- golf balls and darts -- and made more than a dozen arrests. Security was extra tight for Wednesday’s game; about a dozen people were arrested.
But for all the hostility directed at their rivals, fans of Man United, also known as the Red Devils because of the horned devil on the club crest, are hurling more invective these days at their own team’s owners.
“Glazer -- forever in your debt,” declared a sarcastic banner at a protest outside Old Trafford, United’s stadium, before a game Saturday. Inside, spectators chanted: “Love United, hate Glazer,” a slogan that’s also on stickers slapped on lampposts around the neighborhood.
A shout of “Stand up if you hate Glazer” got three-quarters of the fans in the stadium -- which seats 76,000 people -- to their feet, news reports said.
“What irritates me more than anything else,” Bradford told an American reporter, “is that Malcolm Glazer has done this very American thing -- please don’t take offense -- where he buys the club, then uses that to pay off his debts.”
“Malcolm Glazer isn’t a football fan,” Bradford added. “Malcolm Glazer is a businessman. . . . He’s come over here and bought Manchester United because of the brand and how big we were, but I don’t think he understands football” -- or the special culture that surrounds the sport in Britain.
Like many soccer teams here, United began, in 1878, as a local amateur workingman’s club. It has always been firmly rooted in the community.
But fans say that they and their concerns are now being given the cold shoulder by Glazer and his six adult children, all of whom sit on the board. United followers especially are smarting over an increase in ticket prices and a new season-ticket scheme, unique among soccer clubs in Britain, that obliges holders to pay for cup games as well if they want to hold on to their subscriptions. Many fans feel that they are paying for the Glazers’ sins.
“They haven’t put in any money at all -- just taken money out of it,” said Duncan Drasdo, who heads an organization of supporters that’s campaigning to oust the Glazer family. “They’re opportunistic, seeing where they can grab value at the expense of other people.”
Only the sale of Ronaldo, who may be the world’s best soccer player, to Real Madrid for the record sum of about $130 million prevented the club from posting a loss last year.
In a spot of good news, enough investors were confident in the team, if not necessarily the Glazers, that last week’s bond issue was heavily oversubscribed. But fans reel at reports that lawyers’ fees for the bond issue added an additional $24 million to the club’s debit column.
Antipathy for the Glazer family is so virulent that Man United’s revered manager, Alex Ferguson, who has avoided criticizing his Yankee bosses, has appealed to fans to “stand together rather than take action that will damage ourselves more than anyone else.”
But no one seems in a mood to heed Ferguson’s plea. Someone is tampering with their core beliefs, dissing the sacred relationship between team and fans and proving themselves to be poor stewards.
The sooner the Glazers are gone, the better, many United fans say. And then, with a sigh of relief and probably a swig of beer, they can finally go back to the Devils they know.
