The Glazers can't claim to be the most popular family in the city, but their
desire to buy Manchester United in 2005 was at least understandable. It certainly wasn't unique.
The club has long been one of the most sought after pieces of footballing real estate.
Ever since a local butcher by the name of Louis Edwards collected enough shares to effectively
take control of the club in the 1960s for £40,000, passing them on to his son Martin when
he died in 1980, the club has bewitched a slew of the world's richest and most dangerous men,
hoping to capitalise on one of global sport's iconic brands.
There was the disgraced fraudster, former MP, newspaper proprietor,
war hero, alleged Israeli spy and Oxford United owner Robert Maxwell, who made a £10 million bid
for Manchester United in 1984. It was rejected, which was just as well. When he died after falling
off his yacht near the Canary Islands seven years later, it emerged that he'd been siphoning
off hundreds of millions of pounds from his companies' pension funds to stave off bankruptcy.
There was the brief, slightly ridiculous attempt in 1989 by property tycoon Michael
Knighton to buy the club for £20 million. That failed, but only after Knighton had dressed in
a full United kit and treated the Old Trafford crowd to a few minutes of low quality keepy-uppy.
Media mogul Rupert Murdoch was next in 1998,
looking to make the club the lynch pin of his BSkyB broadcasting empire with a £623 million bid.
The New Labour government referred the deal to the Monopoly and Mergers Commission
and it was rejected on the grounds it “would damage the quality of British football”.
At one point a strongman dictator that ruled Myanmar even considered a crack at owning
the club. Amongst the 2010 trove of US diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks,
founded by Julian Assange, was a document from the US embassy in Myanmar that claimed
General Than Shwe was lining up a £634 million bid to buy United in the hope of
distracting the native population from a plethora of local issues
Alas, the General's dreams of walking out on to the Old Trafford pitch fell by the wayside. But
even that tale pales in comparison to the one potential Manchester United owner who got away:
Colonel Muammar “Mad Dog” Gaddafi, Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution of Libya.
According to Cardiff chairman Mehmet Dalman, when Manchester United's ownership
was in the balance back in 2005, a late bid arrived from a surprising potential owner.
“People don’t realise how the deal was a whisker away from going to Libya.
Gaddafi almost bought the club. That’s how close it got — literally you’re
talking about a few hours,” Dalman told the Sunday Times in a 2018 interview.
The chance to own Manchester United is thought to have come about thanks to a feud between
Sir Alex Ferguson and the club’s majority shareholders J.P McManus and John Magnier
over the stud rights of a race horse, the Rock of Gibraltar. The conflict ended up in court,
souring his relationship with two important allies.
Whoever controlled Magnier's and McManus's shares controlled the club. At the time
Mehmet Dalman was running the investment arm of Germany's Commerzbank. The British,
Turkish Cypriot -born financier had bought 2.5 per cent of United shares on a whim
before being asked by JP McManus and John Magnier to sell their near 30 per cent shareholding.
Libya's colourful dictator emerged as a leading bidder.
The thought of one of the world's most notorious dictators buying Manchester United
might sound fanciful, but at the time Gaddafi was being brought back into the international fold
after renouncing his pursuit of Weapons of Mass Destruction. The year before, in 2004,
then British Prime Minister Tony Blair visited Libya and historically shook Gaddafi's hand.
Still, unlike many dictators, Gaddafi hated the game of football. In the final chapter
of his 1975 “Green Book” manifesto, Gaddafi outlined his disdain for spectator sports.
“The thousands who crowd stadiums to view, applaud and laugh are foolish people who have failed to
carry out the activity themselves. They line up lethargically in the stands of the sports grounds,
and applaud those heroes who wrest from them the initiative,
dominate the field and control the sport and, in so doing, exploit the facilities that the
masses provide … sport is a public activity which must be practised rather than watched.”
He famously gave a two-hour speech before the start of the 1982 Africa Cup of Nations,
which was being hosted by Libya, before finishing off with a curt: “All you stupid spectators,
have your stupid game.” He was deeply jealous of the devotion and affection
that football could bestow onto other people and even banned names on the back of football shirts.
Except for one player's name.
His son Saadi thought of himself as a bit of a player, first for Al Ahly Tripoli and
later as captain for the national team. He ran the Libyan FA for a while too and,
as you might expect from the son of a dictator, the brutality of the regime seeped into the game.
When the fans of Al Ahly Benghazi paraded a donkey with Saadi's number painted on it before a game,
Gaddafi senior ordered that the stadium be bulldozed to the ground.
Saadi was undroppable, of course. He was also accused of torturing and
murdering former Libyan international and coach Basheer al Rayani in 2005.
But there was money to be made. Libya has vast oil wealth. OPEC estimates that Libya
has 74 billion barrels of proven crude oil reserves, a little less than Russia.
But whereas Russia has a population of 145 million, Libya's is under 7 million.
As relations with the west and in particular Italy thawed, Libya invested its oil wealth in football,
buying 7.5 per cent of Juventus. The 2002 Italian Super Cup was even played in Tripoli
This largesse lead to one of the strangest episodes in European football. Saadi signed
for Perugia in 2003, just one of a series of outlandish moves by then president Luciano Gaucci.
Gaucci's eccentricities included trying to sack South Korean striker Ahn Jung-hwan
for scoring against Italy at the 2002 World Cup finals and trying to use a loophole in
the Italian FA's regulations to sign a female player for the men's senior team.
The inspiration for Saadi's signing, though, seemed to come from a higher power:
then AC Milan owner and Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. Gaucci,
who would later be declared bankrupt and flee to the Dominican Republic where he died in 2020,
released a statement at the time that claimed “Berlusconi called me up and encouraged me.
He told me that having Gaddafi in the team is helping us build a relationship with Libya.
If he plays badly, he plays badly. So be it.”
And play badly he did. Gaddafi hired disgraced Olympic sprinter Ben Johnson as his personal
trainer to get him in shape and stayed for two years. He was banned for failing a drugs test,
made just three appearances and was later voted as the worst player in the history of Serie A.
Still, he gave a 2005 interview to the New York Times whilst in Italy
expressing his passion for the game whilst also explaining his father's ambivalence towards it.
“Always, my father looks at things in a political way … They aren't political, and I've told him I
don't want any of that stuff. Every day I'm with him, I explain to him the mentality of the fans,
how it helps young people, how it's like breath for youth,” he said.
Yet, in that interview Saadi hinted that his father at least understood the potential political
power of football. A deal was being discussed, Saadi admitted, to take over a famous English
club for hundreds of millions of pounds. Although completing the deal had become more difficult in
the aftermath of Roman Abramovich's takeover of Chelsea. “It's like the Anglican Church,
they don't want foreigners to take control … but it would help broaden Libya's image,” said Saadi.
So Mehmet Dalman flew to Tripoli by private jet to meet Gaddafi senior's
entourage and then the Brother Leader himself.
“I remember saying ‘listen,
you are buying the Church of England... you do realise that? Manchester United is a religion,”
Hours of tough negotiations followed, with Colonel Gaddafi pushing hard,
but they could not reach a deal,.
Instead it was the Glazers who clinched Magnier and J. P. McManus' stake for a cool £130 million.
Malcolm Glazer’s Red Football Ltd went about acquiring 98 per cent of the club’s shares,
forcing the rest to be sold. And the rest is history. Although many of
the club's fans have been furious at the amount of money taken out by the Glazers,
the club has become one of the most commercially successful clubs in the world.
Ferguson stayed on, winning five more league titles and the Champions League.
The Gaddafis in the other hand didn't quite as happy an ending.
An uprising and civl war in 2011 saw Colonel Gaddafi removed from power.
He fled but was found hiding in a drainage ditch outside Sirte, where he was lynched.
Saadi meanwhile, fled to Niger but was extradited back to Libya where
he faced charges connected to abuses that occurred under his father's rule.
A court has since exonerated him of the murder of Bashir al Rayani but he remains in jail.
His allies claim that he is currently being tortured in prison.
There are many issue with the Glazer's reign at Manchester United.
But an important lesson can be learned from that Sliding Doors moment back in 2005, relevant to the
ownership struggles involving Premier League clubs and autocratic regimes today. Beware
what you wish for. History rarely looks kindly on the actions of a dictator.