The main road leading to Old Trafford Stadium is called Sir Matt Busby Way. It used to be Warwick Road, but it was renamed in 1993 to honor the manager who navigated the biggest crisis in Manchester United’s history.
Busby was one of the survivors of the 1958 plane crash, which killed 23 people and decimated the young team that looked destined to conquer Europe. The coach received the last rites three times, but returned ten years later to win the European Cup, current Champions League.
The person responsible for taking one of the richest and most famous clubs in the world out of the current crisis, whoever he may be, will also have to receive a tribute.
Without winning the English title for nine years, outside the biggest continental tournament once again, with loss of revenue, predatory owners and successive problems on the field, United is experiencing one of the most difficult moments in its history. And apparently doesn’t know how to get out of it.
“The only people responsible for successive low points in our decade of decline are the club’s owners,” complains MUST (Manchester United Official Fan Association) CEO Duncan Drasdo.
The fear is that a new low point will happen this Monday (22). The team welcomes Liverpool, their biggest rival, in the main classic of English football. The same match, last season, ended in United’s defeat by 5-0. It’s been a taboo among historic opponents that has been going on for four years.
United are bottom of the Premier League, with two defeats after two matches. The last one, last week, was a humiliating 4-0 against Brentford.
Before this Monday’s game, protests by fans are scheduled in front of the stadium. Scenes that have become commonplace. One of them, in May 2021, prevented the classic against Liverpool.
“I can only say that the owners want to win and we want the fans to support the club. I can understand that I haven’t been here that long to understand the whole context. We have to fight together and be united”, asked Dutch coach Erik Hag in this Friday (19).
The decadence of the club that until a few years ago was the richest in the world is not new. It was only slowed down by the ubiquitous presence of Sir Alex Ferguson. With an iron fist, he controlled everything in football at Old Trafford for 26 years. From 1993, when the team won the English title after 26 years, it collected trophies.
There were 13 Premier League titles, four FA Cups, two Champions Leagues and two Club World Cups (to name only the most important ones).
Since Ferguson’s retirement in 2013, Manchester United has become a coach’s guillotine. David Moyes, Louis van Gaal, José Mourinho and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer were sacked. Ralf Rangnick took over as interim and complained so much in public about the quality of the cast that the directors couldn’t wait to get rid of him. The German even said that ten more new players were needed.
Inside the training center in Carrington, ten Hag has in his hands the challenge of putting together a cracked locker room, divided into pans and leaking critical information from teammates to the press. Cristiano Ronaldo, worried about his personal records in the Champions League, wants to leave.
This Friday, the club announced an agreement to sign Brazilian midfielder Casemiro from Real Madrid.
For part of the crowd, the squad is made up of players concerned only with receiving millionaire payments and posting photos on Instagram, not striving for the cause.
The image of Dutchman Memphis Depay, advised by his own colleagues to show more humility, has gone down in history, arriving for a reserve team game in 2016, driving a Rolls Royce. Paul Pogba, hired for 105 million euros (R$ 547 million at the current price) went on a collision course with José Mourinho, especially after posting a video on Instagram, alongside other unrelated athletes, in which he laughed shamelessly while the team was eliminated in the League Cup.
But none of them are as disliked in Manchester as anyone with the surname Glazer. The American family has controlled the club since 2005 when it achieved the feat of buying the then most valuable club in the world without spending a penny of its own pocket.
In a financial operation of successive bank loans, they raised around 800 million pounds (R$ 4.1 billion at the current price) to own 100% of the shares of United, which is listed as a company on the stock exchange.
They gave as guarantee of payment the goods and income of the association itself. Overnight, the club went from owing nothing to a debt of £800m. Which has not yet been paid, ended up being refinanced, and is today at 600 million pounds (R$ 3.1 billion).
The author of financial engineering, Ed Woodward, was awarded the position of CEO, despite never having had any experience in the sport. His period at Old Trafford, which ended last year, was marked by blunders.
His replacement, Richard Arnold, an executive also with no previous experience in the world of the ball, became known to fans when he boasted that the results on the field did not influence Manchester United’s ability to generate engagement on social networks.
“The only money spent on players is what the club has generated. [os Glazers] they didn’t put anything. Let’s get this myth out of our heads that the Glazer family puts money into the club every year, like Roman Abramovich did at Chelsea”, criticizes winger Gary Neville, a reference for the team between the 1990s and 2000s and now a commentator for Sky Sports.
Not only did they not put it in, but they took it off. According to published balance sheet figures, since the purchase, in dividends and family loans, the Glazers (also owners of the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers) have withdrawn more than 1 billion pounds from Old Trafford’s coffers. billion in current money).
No one in the family has ever given an interview on the matter. A TV crew from the UK went to Florida and approached Joel Glazer, one of the owners, as he exited a shopping mall. He got into his red Ferrari and left without a word.
The permanent state of conflict in Manchester caused Elon Musk, the richest man in the world according to Forbes magazine, owner of an estate valued at US$ 262 billion (R$ 1.35 trillion), to write on Twitter that he was buying the club. . Shortly after, he said it was just a joke.
The interest of Sir Jim Ratcliffe, the biggest fortune in the United Kingdom (21 billion pounds or R$ 129 billion), seems to be more concrete.
But no one knows for sure how much it would be worth to buy a club that, despite the problems, remains a money-making machine. According to consultancy KPMG, the club’s revenue in 2021 was US$ 636 million (R$ 3.3 billion).
The estimate is that the sale price could reach 8 billion pounds (R$ 49 billion). It would be the biggest transaction in the history of the sporting world.
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