Thursday, May 12, 2005

the Son of Abramovich?

It is confirmed that Malcolm Glazer, the millionaire owner of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers have bought controlling shares of Manchester United, the famed UK football club. Reactions so far are on the opposite side of good. Fans are uber-pissed and are worried about ticket and merchandise prices increase, the possible offloading of Glazer's 300 million pounds of debt (evidently borrowed to leverage the bid in the first place...currently, ManU itself is debt-free somehow) onto the club and a general distrustfulness that since Glazer probably has never seen a proper game of football in his life, he'll probably run the club into the ground and become the anti-Abramovich.

The media's coverage has an underlying tone of "the American Maverick" taking over a prim and proper of a club, albeit a fantastically rich, celebrated and well known one. So, it's not the most objective of sources. As an ex-United fan, this takeover has the smell of the transaction of shares being good for business, but not necessarily for the club itself. The Glazers' have yet to give details as to their plans for ManU, a big reason for the skepticism. Apparently, details will be given out in the next few days by one son, Joel, who is a huge follower (supposedly).

I'd rather like to hear my football friends' reaction to this, who follow English Premiership football more than I...

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