Monday, May 16, 2005

Glazer Taking Over Man Utd.

This is absolutely the most ridiculous thing I have seen in the sporting world in terms of transfer of ownership. This dude, Malcolm Glazer, who already owns the Tampa Bay Buccaneers of the NFL, comes and makes several takeover bids for Man Utd., given that I am a huge Man Utd. fan, so I might be a little bias, but I'm sure many individuals out there will also agree with what I'm saying. Now the takeover bid from Malcolm Glazer is ridiculous. Now the actual bid is one problem by itself. If the takeover bid came from purely his own money, then that is fine, but Glazer has to borrow half a billion pounds of sterling to complete his bid. Not only does he have to borrow half a billion to complete his bid, he is charging half of that borrowed money, which translates into almost half a billion Canadian to the club! Now for those who are lost in all this, that means the half billion Canadian that is charged to the club must be paid off by the club. So Man Utd. will be buying itself out of the creditor - for Glazer to become debtless. Now some may argue that Glazer will be like the Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, whom after buying the club, dumped truckloads of cash into the team, which of course, resulted in their first EPL title in 50 years. However, here is the problem, Glazer is NOT Abramovich. For Glazer, this is all about taking over the richest team in the world in all of sports. This is about personal gain, for his own financial situation. Not only will Glazer not put money into the team, heck, there is a possibility he will sell off Old Trafford Stadium, or increase ticket prices just to increase revenue. It makes me sick to my stomach to think that Man Utd. will now be owned by someone who does not understand a single thing about the team he's buying, nor the sport it plays, nor the culture/people surrounding the sport. All he is buying it for is for the fame, and for the money. This has the prospect of becoming Leeds United the Second. Beginning with falling out of the picture in European soccer, and then maybe even falling out of the EPL. As a supporter for Man Utd. over the year, how they've produced good young players for their team, this takeover by Glazer will certainly put a dark cloud over the bright sunny sky that used to be over the Old Trafford Stadium. The future of the most popular and richest sport team in the world looks to be jeopardy.

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