Glazers’ deadline for bids is just under two hours away. Manchester UnitedThis was the second challenging development in the process – and one that should have been very difficult to record for the wider game. Train businessman Sheikh Jassim Bin Hamad Al Thani Confirmed that he is 100 percent interested in acquiring the clubTo go with my master’s Jim Ratcliffe.
Linked sources and reports in France stated that the Al Thani bid is around €5bn (£4.45bn). That would fall short of what the Glazers wanted at this point, a phase described by insiders as a “barely opening salvo”. Naturally, with the UK deadline close to 10:00, there was the babble of a third bid.
Qatar’s offer shocked some who were considering involvement and never expected a “credible offer from the Middle East”, industry sources said. Who says Independent this thursday will be successful supported this view and already described Al Thani’s interest as his “favorite”.
Much will depend on how this auction will unfold, and many things are uncertain.
Another element that has been obscured is the definitive ties between Al Thani and the state of Qatar – which should trigger some of the biggest questions about this process. Premier League.
Figures inside Qatari Sports Investments (QSI), which owns Paris Saint-Germain, and the Qatar Investments Authority (QIA), insisted Friday night that it had nothing to do with their own funds and represented a “private” auction, but that’s a statement. that human rights workers consider “ridiculous” in a state like Qatar.
Before moving on to anything else, this is a semi-constitutional monarchy where Emir, a longtime Manchester United supporter, is said to exercise “full executive power”. In other words, all roads lead to the top, and a proposal of this scale would of course require government enforcement.
Then there are the details of Al Thani’s career. One prominent football manager could hardly believe the discussion and said “it’s not complicated, his name is Al Thani, the name of the ruling family”.
Son of the former prime minister, the 40-year-old biographer proudly describes him as the head of the Qatar Islamic Bank (QIB). QIB’s largest single shareholder is state sovereign wealth QIA. Al Thani’s father was previously the chairman of QIA between 2007 and 2013. At this point the debate warrants much more depth than Al Thani’s plans to return the club to “the old glory days”.
Since the “sports wash” is really about the influence and ownership of corporations and has never been as simple as public relations or image, it’s hard not to describe this takeover attempt as the next step in its evolution.
At this point, we are far beyond hosting international tournaments.
The fact that the Premier League does not take the chance to elevate Owners and Managers in terms of state bodies and influence makes it all the more incredible and complete indictment. Newcastle United have had ample opportunities and warnings in the 16 months since the takeover, and Amnesty International UK says they are still waiting for a continuation of a meeting in October 2021. The simultaneous sale of his two most famous institutions, United and Liverpool, should have caused even more alarm.
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He can now abandon the damned situation where three of the Premier League clubs are owned or controlled by the three big states that almost immediately maintain the Gulf blockade. This so-called great British rivalry would become the guardian of a political rivalry that tackled even more grave themes, let alone the much-criticized human rights records of these states.
It should be a turning point for the game, but we’ve already passed that.
Just look at the news from earlier in the week on how this path is allowed, and even how this possibility of takeover is allowed.
The takeover of Newcastle by the Public Investment Fund was ridiculously rejected because the consortium was able to offer “legally binding assurances” that there would be separation between the so-called institution and the Saudi Arabian state. This “fantasy” – as one human rights worker put it at the time – was precisely when the PIF argued in a US court that they should receive sovereign immunity from having to hand over information linked to LIV Golf’s legal battle with the PGA. They were part of the Saudi government.
It’s been a question of how the Premier League would have handled this case if the rules were even marginally raised – but it wasn’t done.
He can still bring Uefa to the agenda. PSG is of course owned by QSI, a subsidiary of QIA. If Al Thani’s bid is successful, Uefa will property rules It could mean that United and PSG can’t play in the same continental rivalry, as many figures in the game on Friday night have argued. Yet there was already confidence that this would not be an obstacle.
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Uefa can of course consult the European Club Association on this issue. But its president is also head of PSG and head of QSI, not to mention a figure close to the Emir of Qatar: Nasser Al-Khelaifi.
You may begin to understand why LaLiga president Javier Tebas described the PSG boss as “too many conflicts of interest”. You can also see the ending point of the game and how it got into this mess.
The prospect of English football’s biggest institution being the biggest club ever to represent a sports wash project is now real.
In that context, they could have won anything, and that wouldn’t make any sense.
You could seriously say that this increases the need for an independent regulator. As this early stage of the United sale shows, it’s too late.