Languishing Manchester United have a new owner. Will the architect of Juventus and PSG and the agitator of the cycling world be able to save the sinking ship? – Soccernet.ee

Christmas brought long-awaited news for Manchester United fans, mired in mediocrity, when British billionaire Jim Ratcliffe finally agreed to officially acquire 25% of the club’s shares. For this he will have to pay 1.03 billion pounds, or approximately 1.19 billion euros.

The 71-year-old Ratcliffe has long expressed interest in buying the club, but the takeover by his company Ineos Group is only now materialising. It is important here that Ineos will be responsible for the football part of the club. In addition to the purchase price, Ratcliffe has promised to invest 236 million pounds, or 272 million euros, in the renovation of the club’s home stadium, Old Trafford, in the near future.

The Glazer family, who bought the majority of United’s shares for £790m between 2003-2005, had already announced last autumn that they were interested in selling the club. More correctly, back then we talked vaguely about “knowing strategic alternatives,” and that’s exactly how confusing the buying process became. For example, the club also wanted to buy Qatari banker Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad Al Thani, but he wanted 100% of the capital for five billion pounds, and the sale process was delayed for so long because of the Glazers that in October the Sheikh announced the purchase withdrawal of the offer.

Ten years of commuting up and down

Manchester-born Ratcliffe tried to take over Chelsea last year but confirmed he has been a lifelong United supporter. “While the club’s commercial success has ensured that the financial capacity to win major trophies has always been present, this potential has not been realized in recent times. Ineos Sport Group is here for the long haul and recognizes that there is much work ahead, but our ambition is clear: Manchester United must be brought back to where they belong, perhaps at the top of English, European and world football,” Ineos announced in a press release.

Manchester United plc reaches an agreement for Sir Jim Ratcliffe, chairman of INEOS, to take a stake of up to 25% in the company.

Click here for details: https://t.co/NE1yEko9YF#MUFC pic.twitter.com/ODuGVb0bqB
— INEOS (@INEOS) December 24, 2023

United last won the Premier League title in 2013 under Sir Alex Ferguson. Since then, the club has had David Moyes, Louis van Gaal, Jose Mourinho, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, Ralf Rangnick and Erik ten Hag as managers, as well as Ryan Giggs and Michael Carrick on an interim basis. In ten years, under the hands of these eight men, they only managed to win the FA Cup in 2016, the Europa League in 2017, and also the League Cup twice in 2017 and 2023.

In the Premier League, at best, he finished second, Mourinho succeeded in 2018 and Solskjaer in 2021. Last season, under ten Hags, they finally finished third, but the new season started so badly that a start it must have been just as bad in 1930. After losing 0:2 to West Ham on Saturday, United have already recorded 13 defeats since the start of the season, are eighth in the table and league leaders Arsenal are already a dozen points behind distance. So far they have been eliminated both from the Euroseries, having finished last in the Champions League subgroup, and from the League Cup.

Ineos, which operates in the petrochemical sector, already owns two football clubs: Nice, which is currently second in the French league and aiming for a place in the Champions League, and Lausanne-Sport, which plays in the Swiss Premier League. Their sporting portfolio also includes the world-class sailing team Ineos Britannia, captained by Ben Ainslie, who have won four consecutive Olympic gold medals. It also owns a third of the Mercedes Formula 1 team and in 2019 the highly successful cycling team Team Sky was acquired.

United will officially become owners once all necessary procedures are completed, which could take six to eight weeks. Following the acquisition of the stake, Ineos will gain two seats on the board of directors of the Manchester United joint stock company: John Reece, shareholder and finance director of Ineos, and Robert Nevin, chairman of the board of directors of Ineos Sport, will occupy these positions .

🚨🔴 INEOS will soon begin work on the new board structure with Jean Claude Blanc and Sir Dave Brailsford joining the club, as planned.

Others will follow with a new director, a new transfer strategy, a different plan for 2024: it will take time but changes are expected. pic.twitter.com/8DhBhlXylD
— Fabrizio Romano (@FabrizioRomano) December 24, 2023

They will also have two places on the United club’s board of directors, and Ratcliffe has already found candidates for these positions as well. A new member of the board is Sir Dave Brailsford, long-time manager of the cycling team formerly known as Team Sky, under whose guidance Bradley Wiggins, Chris Froome and Geraint Thomas won three out of five Tours de France between 2012 and 2018. Brailsford has been working as sporting director of Nice Football Club since May.

In addition to him, Jean-Claude Blanc, who helped Juventus recover quickly in the late 2000s, will join the board of directors. Calciopoli from the shame caused by the scandal and build a new stadium. In the past, Blanc served on the organizing committees of the Albertville Olympics, the Tour de France, the Paris-Dakar Marathon and the French Open. His employer has been Paris Saint-Germain for the past twelve years, until he joined Ineos earlier this year.

All new, but for what time?

Ultimately, what does all this mean for Manchester United, whose fans would have liked to see the Glazers walk away from the club but must now hope that a vote from Ratcliffe’s camp will bear fruit? Is there any real hope that the new faces will be able to steer the ship on a new course?

For starters, it’s definitely not the end of the Glazer era. They previously owned 69% of the club’s shares and when they officially became owners of the club in 2005, United found themselves saddled with £660m of debt. Hundreds of millions of pounds of interest have been paid on this sum over the years, but overall debt relief has not been successful. Based on the first three quarters of 2023, this still stands at around £725 million.

🚨 INEOS executives Sir Dave Brailsford and Jean-Claude Blanc will join Man Utd’s football board as part of a 25% deal. Sir Jim Ratcliffe will become a major shareholder like Glazers. $300 million for future investment in Old Trafford’s infrastructure @TheAthleticFC #MUFC
— David Ornstein (@David_Ornstein) December 24, 2023

But United’s current chief executive, Richard Arnold, will leave the role at the end of the year and will be temporarily taken over by United’s most experienced lawyer, Patrick Stewart. By any measure, Blanc, with decades of experience, should be the next permanent CEO at the helm of Ineos.

The task of 59-year-old Brailsford, knighted after the London Olympics, will likely be to map the current situation. The Athletic notes that Ineos has been accused of overconfidence in the existing structure following the Nice takeover, but over time it has become clear that the problems are more fundamental and that loosening the purse strings further will not resolve the concerns on its own. Ineos will probably be able to learn from the mistakes made in France with United.

Ratliffe has already made it clear that the modernization of both Old Trafford and Carrington Training Center in particular is vital in his eyes. He has also promised to make more investment in United’s women’s team, which won a silver medal in the English Premier League last season.

But Ineos will not erase the club’s debt burden, which now stands at more than £1 billion. This was what Sheikh Jassim had promised before he got tired of waiting for the Glazers. It should also not be forgotten that United have spent lavishly – and often imprudently and/or unsuccessfully – in recent years and must continue to comply with the rules of Financial Fair Play, or FFP.

If the Glazers have managed the club from a distance and see it primarily as a money-making opportunity, it can still be assumed that, unlike them, Ratcliffe is there with his soul. He named Eric Cantona as his favorite player, even borrowing the code name for the acquisition project “Project Trawler” from the Frenchman’s legendary and enigmatic monologue “when the seagulls follow the fishing boat”.

All in all, United’s debt will not decrease in light of the new deal and, at least for the time being, the Glazers will be able to continue using United as their personal ATM. But Ratcliffe’s priority is to get the sporting side of the club back on track, which has also deteriorated in recent years and especially this year. However, probably not everything will be resolved quickly, because Ratcliffe, recently asked if he wasn’t afraid that investing money in United would mean throwing it away, replied: “I don’t think so. In ten years, not two: we’ll be in a good position. I’m fully aware of that.” convinced.”