Michael McGuire: If the ruler of one of the world’s most repressive societies becomes the face of your club, it matters
Saudi Arabian dictator and murderer Mohammed bin Salman is interested in buying Manchester United. If that happens there’s no justification for sticking with my team, writes Michael McGuire.
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Is there a point where it becomes just morally and unethically impossible to support your team anymore?
I don’t mean stopping because they are crap. Or the players annoy you. Or the coach keeps talking nonsense.
I mean when the football club that you have supported for 40 years makes you feel queasy when you think about it for any length of time. Is it OK to say “that’s it, I’m done?
It’s something I’ve been thinking about the last week. After rumours emerged that Saudi Arabian dictator, and director of murder, Mohammed bin Salman is interested in buying Manchester United in the English Premier League.
It’s been hard enough over the last 10 years to keep supporting United. Under the ownership of the US billionaire Glazer family, the club has been relentlessly hollowed out of tradition and soul.
In its place has risen a marketing machine. Whereas United was once the football club of giants such as Matt Busby and Alex Ferguson. Of Dennis Law and Roy Keane. It is now a brand. A vehicle to make money. A logo in the world’s most popular football league. It’s become that worst of all possible sporting words: A franchise.
United aren’t alone in this of course. All professional sports are, to some degree, rampantly commercial.
But the Glazers are one thing. Mohammad Bin Salman is quite another.
At some level we all want to believe whichever sporting team we follow says something about what sort of character we are. It might be vaguely ridiculous, but passionate sport fans identify with clubs as an extension of ourselves to some degree.
And the insults we use to describe fans of opposing clubs tend to infer they are lesser, more stupid human beings. Often with questionable hygiene and a tendency to commit criminal acts.
Man United are only my English club. Perhaps that makes it easier to give them away. I was born in Glasgow, Scotland. My abiding sporting love is Celtic. A club with its origins in Glasgow’s Irish Catholic diaspora. A club founded in charity to feed the poor. It’s the club I feel closest to.
United were a team I chose when I was seven or eight. Every Scottish kid picked an English team to follow.
I can’t remember why I settled on United. Maybe because they weren’t Liverpool. And that was a good decision. Ever met a Liverpool fan?
But if United end up in the hands of bin Salman, what’s left of the club is started supporting in the late 1970s? What does it stand for anymore?
What would it say about one of the world’s most successful clubs if it fell into the hands of the ruler of one of the world’s most repressive and brutal societies? The man who signed off on the murder of US-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi is not the man I want anywhere near a football club that I support.
Perhaps it shouldn’t matter who owns the club. It should all be about the players on the pitch, the games and the trophies won and lost.
But it does matter. If Mohammad Bin Salman becomes the face of your club, it certainly matters. Even if he brings enough money to buy Kylian Mbappe, Lionel Messi and Odsonne Edouard.
A confession. I have done this kind of thing before. When I moved to South Australia in 1981, the first VFL game I remember was that year’s grand final between Carlton and Collingwood. For reasons now beyond me I backed the Blues. Again, a good decision. I couldn’t imagine life as a Collingwood fan.
And that was all fine until a few years later in the late ’80s when I realised what an appalling person its president John Elliott was. Dropped them like a stone.
Which turned out well for me as well. After spending many years as a stateless footy fan I moved to Sydney and adopted the Swans.
I’m still holding out hope for United. That it won’t be taken over by bin Salman. Even that the Glazers will sell to someone who cares about the club.
But, if not, then that’s it. So long and thanks for the memories.