Spectre of Qatar still looms large over Manchester United

Telegraph

6 days ago

The long journey of Paris St-Germain to the peak of European football has not always been a comfortable one for the state of Qatar, having acquired the club in 2011, although that does not seem to have diminished its appetite for the power conferred by football.
Invited to sit among the VIP seats at the Allianz Arena in Munich on Saturday night was Sir Alex Ferguson, a guest of the PSG president Nasser Al-Khelaifi. The man who contested four of these Champions League finals as United manager must be the best-connected football fan on the planet, although no one can blame him for giving United's recent Asia tour a miss.
Ferguson was also a guest of Al-Khelaifi at the official dinner in Munich on Friday night for the two finalists, held by Uefa and attended by its president Aleksander Ceferin. The event is designed for the ownership and management of both clubs to socialise, as well as premium-end corporate sponsors, along with the Uefa hierarchy.
The PSG president is, along with Ceferin, the most powerful man in European football. As the chairman of the European Club Association, Al-Khelaifi negotiates with Ceferin on how the riches of the Champions League are distributed. As both chair of Qatar Sports Investment [QSI], a subsidiary of the country's sovereign wealth fund, and chair of the state broadcaster beIN Sports, he sits at the nexus of Qatari power in football.
How far Al-Khelaifi was connected to the bid for Manchester United by Sheikh Jassim, a Qatari royal and son of a former Qatar prime minster Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim, is a matter of dispute. With his position of pre-eminence in the European game, and his contacts, Al-Khelaifi would be an obvious first port of call for any Qatari seeking to buy a European football club. Officially, Al-Khelaifi was kept separate from Jassim's series of offers for United over the course of 2023. He denied any involvement in June that year.
In the 17 months that have followed the successful Ineos bid for 25 per cent of United, rising to 28.94 per cent, Jassim's bid, via his Nine Two Foundation [NTF], has slipped into history. The New York Stock Exchange documents released last year claimed that NTF had not provided necessary evidence of funds. While the bids were complex, Jassim, via NTF, offered less than Sir Jim Ratcliffe up front, but proposed to pay it immediately. He was to buy the club's shares in their entirety, including those of the minority shareholders, and clear the debt. The offer was rejected by the Glazers.
It is worth noting that, as of Saturday, United's share price on the New York Stock Exchange was little more than $14, valuing the club at €2.42 billion, or £1.8 billion – close to where it was at the original 2012 listing. In 2023, both bidders offered much in excess of the listed price – but even so, the decline in value of those shares since has been as lamentable as the club's performances on the pitch.
Despite their withdrawal from the bidding process in October 2023, the indication from Qatar is that Jassim and those around him have not abandoned the hope of owning United. They still believe that one day the opportunity may present itself and nothing that has happened since the deal between the Glazers and Ratcliffe has diminished that.
How a Qatari ownership might have fared is a matter of conjecture. Certainly it took QSI long enough to set PSG on the right path. Although the argument is that valuable lessons have been learnt in that respect.
Whether or not a Qatari bid for United is realistic is not a question in the short term. Ratcliffe is, for the time being, taking the pain of turning around United. There have been 450 redundancies, the worst league finish in 50 years and a new manager with the lowest win ratio of any of his 21 st century predecessors. The debt is now around £1 billion when the Glazers' borrowings and outstanding transfer payments are considered. As for the Champions League, United are further away than they have ever been in the competition's post-European Cup history.
The details of the Glazers' deal with Ratcliffe does include a provision for the Glazers to sell the club out from under their junior partner – although Ratcliffe has the right to make a first offer on any share sale. The British billionaire once said that he doubted whether Jassim truly existed, and it would be fair to say that the Qataris did not mount he most aggressive campaign to introduce their man to the English football public. Just a single picture released for public consumption, and only the briefest biographical details.
There was frustration in some quarters that NTF did not put up a more robust public-relations campaign over the course of 2023. Those who know the details will simply say that Qataris, even those with considerable influence in the state, feel uncomfortable tooting too loud on the proverbial trumpet before a deal is done. That was to their cost. Ratcliffe proved a more accessible figure, before and after the deal with the Glazers.
Two years ago this month, Ratcliffe and Jassim were going head-to-head with their offers to the US bank Raine, which oversaw the auction for the Glazers. It was considered the most critical decision in United's history and yet in the end, it felt that no such decision was made. The Glazers hung on to power. Ratcliffe accepted a minority stake and the burden of change and none can deny that, on the pitch, it has got worse.
By October 2023 the process had become bruising. Jassim's withdrawal that month was ultimately predicated on price. Even with the extraordinary wealth of Qatar's richest families, there were limits. The question is whether that auction could ever be replayed, with Ratcliffe obliged to try to finance buying the club outright against a fresh Qatari bid. As ever with United, it is the Glazers who will decide that.