Perhaps, in a way, this had to happen eventually. Football’s narrative arc demanded nothing less. The numbers simply made too little sense. Perhaps like Batman v Superman, Godzilla v Kong, the cronut, Manchester United and Qatar was simply a crossover concept begging to be brought into existence. Indulge me for a second. I’m thinking pre-season tours to Doha. I’m thinking an Mbappé/Rashford reality TV job-swap. I’m thinking luxury party barges on Manchester Ship Canal. A hologrammatic New Trafford to sit directly above the old one. A Phil Jones mural visible from space.
And so to the news that Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani – a private Qatari individual with no direct connection to Qatar itself, unless you churlishly count the fact that he is its head of state – is interested in purchasing United. Or perhaps simply a stake in United rather than a full takeover. Or, according to which report you read, not necessarily Thani himself but a fund linked to the royal family, or perhaps the Qatar Investment Authority sovereign wealth fund.
This is pretty much all we know at this stage, which one suspects is exactly how the Qataris want it. Interested enough to test the water, to perform due diligence, to gauge the reaction from fans and the wider game; deniable enough that they can still pull out. One potential sticking point appears to be the valuation of between £6bn and £8bn being imposed by the Glazer family. Once you add investment to the squad and the exorbitant cost of redeveloping Old Trafford and Carrington, you’re close to an 11-figure sum before you’ve even landed in the country.
In short: we are not talking another Paris here. It is easily forgotten amid the maelstrom that followed, but Qatar’s initial investment in Paris Saint-Germain was minuscule by comparison: an initial 70% stake that valued the club at less than £100m. Financially speaking, it was a no-brainer. Paris was a failing club with a knockdown price, enormous potential, unfettered access to one of the richest markets in Europe, no close rivals and a medium-strength league that could easily be brought to heel.
None of these advantages exists with United. For all the travails on the pitch, it remains one of the sport’s most successful businesses: a paradigmatic example of how the modern sports club can lucratively leverage its brand and its advertising space without ever needing to trouble a trophy engraver. The Premier League will not simply be bought and bidden as Qatar did with Ligue 1, trapping it in an irresistible pincer movement of unmatchable transfer spending and beIN broadcast rights. If you’re in charge of the sovereign wealth fund of an autocratic nation with a virtually limitless credit facility, you want cast-iron guarantees. Lumbered with an eye-watering price tag and surrounded by predators, United offer very few.
So what might Qatar want from United? Perhaps the same thing that it wanted from Harrods, from Heathrow airport and Sainsbury’s, all of which it either owns or owns significant portions of: immediate identification with a cherished global brand, almost a stake in British society itself. Among cultural entities not even Liverpool or Arsenal can offer the same level of name recognition, the ability to print money simply by being who you are.
And as Saudi Arabia discovered with Newcastle, buying a football club earns you an army of pliant bots desperate to do your bidding for you. Before the last World Cup, Qatar surreptitiously paid hundreds of football fans to promote the tournament for them online, rewarding them with free flights and tickets. It’s a bit like that, really, but instead of free flights and tickets it’s Jude Bellingham and Harry Kane.
The really interesting question here, by contrast, is what United fans can possibly want out of Qatar. Spending money? If any club can offer a salutary lesson in the dangers of brainlessly flinging resources at the transfer market, then surely it is the club that has spent more than £1bn in transfer fees in the past decade and won a grand total of zero league titles and reached zero Champions League semi-finals. The redevelopment of Old Trafford is long overdue, but anybody who visited the grotesque and soulless domes of Qatar’s World Cup will testify that money can buy you a lot of things, but it doesn’t buy you taste.
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There are no palatable options on the table here. There is no queue of ethical multibillionaires out there scrambling to claim a piece of one of the world’s dirtiest sports. Nobody has ever accumulated the sums of money required to buy a football club of Manchester United’s size without some form of widespread exploitation: exploitation of the planet, exploitation of human rights, exploitation of some of the world’s poorest and least powerful people. Just because the Glazers were terrible, parasitic owners does not mean the next guys will be any better.
But United fans have always liked to think of their club as an exemplar. As somehow more cherished and noble than any other. How stirring it would be if, as in 2005 when they furiously protested against the Glazer takeover, they chose to evoke that sense of exceptionalism for the greater good of the sport. To resist the prostitution of their club to one of the world’s most savage governments. To demand better. The Glazers took hundreds of millions of pounds out of United. A Qatari takeover would take more still: something unique and elemental and important, something that it could never, ever replace.
