Manchester United inspires strong feelings among millions of soccer fans.
By DAMIAN CRISTODERO
Published November 6, 2004
[AP photo]
A Manchester United fan at Old Trafford Stadium makes her feelings known about the potential of Malcolm Glazer buying the soccer team.
The way Peter Ward figured it, some things were just bigger than the game, bigger than the teams for which he played.
It didn't matter that Ward and his teammates fought like heck to beat Manchester United. When the game was over, Ward asked his opponent's biggest stars to sign a program.
This wasn't a one-time event, Ward said recently from his Tampa home, remembering his days playing professional soccer in England. He asked for autographs every time he faced United.
What else could Ward do? He grew up in Derby, south of Manchester, where he rooted for United as if on a mission.
"It is," Ward said, "just the greatest team in the world."
Manchester United's story is remarkable.
It includes a record 11 Football Association Cups (England's most prestigious soccer championship), a distinction as the world's richest soccer team and a world fan base the team says could be as high as 75-million, which it cultivated with smart marketing and aggressive financial endeavors.
Its influence even has reached the bay area as Bucs owner Malcolm Glazer, who owns 28.11 percent of the team, has made what is believed to be a $1-billion offer to buy the rest.
Speculation about a possible takeover has made Glazer about as popular among United fans as a Red Sox cap at Yankee Stadium, and not just because Glazer is an American whom they perceive knows nothing about the game. The way the fans see it, the future of the franchise could be at stake.
A little overblown? A little too dramatic? Then you don't know soccer in England.
"It's more than just a game," Steve Wegerle said. "It's part of their lives. When you're a fan of the team, and it doesn't matter which one, you're a fan of that team for life whether they're having a good season or bad. It's unbelievable."
Wegerle, who played for the Tampa Bay Rowdies of the now-defunct North American Soccer League, grew up in South Africa, a former British colony where all the news was about England. He said when he was 10, he turned to United after his favorite team, Tottenham Hotspur, gave away his favorite player, Jimmy Greaves. Once Wegerle switched, he was a lifer.
"It's an incredible thing to visit their stadium and watch a game," said Wegerle, who lives in Tampa and coaches the Black Watch Celtic under-14 boys team. "It's an experience you can't put into words. You just have to do it. You won't ever forget it."
Nor will fans forget Feb.6, 1958, when 22 people, including eight Man U players, died after a plane crash that occurred after a refueling stop in Munich during a return trip from a game in Yugoslavia.
Many believe the crash, which decimated the team known as the Busby Babes for its dedication to youth under manager Matt Busby, was the starting point for United's vast following that the team says includes 200 fan clubs in 24 countries.
The team even earned a soft spot among supporters of other English clubs.
"There was a huge sympathy all around Europe and then the world for the loss of the team," said Sam Pilger, senior writer for FourFourTwo, one of England's largest soccer magazines. "If the Boston Red Sox, in the middle of the World Series, came crashing down, it really is like that.
"These great players died, and a wave of sympathy followed. That's where the popularity of the club came from. Everyone adopted them as their second team because you wanted to see them do well."
They did.
Led by players such as Bobby Charlton and Bill Foulkes, both of whom survived the crash, Denis Law and George Best, United won the 1963 FA Cup, Division One titles in 1965 and '67 and in 1968 became the first English team to win the European Champions Cup.
"They created a mystique and a glamor and it all fed from that," Pilger said. "Before Munich, United was Manchester's team. After that, it became everybody's."
Well, not everybody's.
"For as many people who follow them and love them," Pilger said, "there are as many who have their own team and hate them because of their success."
John Thompson, who grew up in Manchester and lives in London, said bring them on.
"It's within you, and it will never let go," Thompson said of his loyalty. "And the football they play has become very attractive. United will never play defensive football. They always try to play entertaining football."
Thompson said he did not push his 9-year-old daughter, Niamh, to support United. But Thompson said she does.
"I think it's fate," he said.
Maybe, but it also could be the approximately 1,000 soccer magazines and United programs Thompson said he owns. Or the framed pictures of, among others, Busby, Law and current manager Sir Alex Ferguson.
Asked about expanding the display beyond the loft of his home, Thompson said it is impossible.
"Lisa," he said of his wife, "would not allow it."
The Glazer factor
Not only was there a march outside Manchester United's Old Trafford Stadium before the Oct. 24 game against Arsenal to protest Glazer's attempt to buy the team, or at least a controlling interest, Pilger said fans hanged Glazer in effigy.
"That's all you need to know," Pilger said of how fans feel about the takeover attempt.
"It is deeply, deeply unpopular. They don't think Glazer is interested in Manchester United to make them a successful club. He thinks it's a good investment. People smell a rat a mile off."
"He's an American football team owner," said Trevor Griffith, who grew up in Manchester, lives in Glen Cove, N.Y., and is membership secretary of United's USA Supporters club. "To the English people, he knows nothing about (soccer). So why would you want to come and buy United unless you were trying to turn it into some kind of moneymaking scheme which could take down the team itself?"
Glazer has declined comment on his efforts to acquire Manchester United. But how about this for motivation? The team is a money machine.
Bloomberg News valued United at about $1.33-billion. And Reuters reported its operating profits were $107.6-million for the fiscal year ending July 2004.
Success on the field is key. United won eight Premier League championships from 1993-2003, five FA Cups from 1990-2004 and the European Champions Cup in 1999.
But that success corresponded with the Internet boom and emergence of satellite television, both of which created awareness of the juggernaut. In fact, the Premier League's contract with Sky TV coincided exactly with United's run of championships.
United's seven-man board also was smart. It increased revenue by becoming one of just eight of England's 92 pro soccer teams to be publicly traded. It organizes summer tours that promote the brand and merchandise sales around the world. Japan, Hong Kong and China are on the schedule for 2005.
Team spokesman Philip Townsend said United's merchandising deal with Nike guarantees it about $37-million a year with bonus provisions that paid about $4-million more the past two years.
He said MUTV -- a joint effort of United, Sky TV and ITV that shows Premier games not telecast by Sky, reserve games, highlight shows and interviews -- has 100,000 subscribers and is available on New York's YES cable outlet. United changed its main sponsor from Sharp Electronics to Vodafone for more money and to establish a strategic partnership with a mobile telecommunications company.
It also has deals with financial institutions that put United's name on credit cards, car insurance, homeowners insurance, personal loans and home mortgages with a percentage of the proceeds going to the team. That is not unique in the 20-team Premier League, though no team advertises them as aggressively on their Web sites.
"They have certainly been ahead of the curve understanding the growth that has occurred in (soccer) and the potential for making money out of the game," said Henk Potts, equity strategist for London's Barclays bank. "They are the first club to realize in order to carry on they have to work the business side of things to let them buy players and be successful on the (field)."
Plus, Townsend said, "It's a huge help in customer relations. It helps us build a database which has better quality information. We know that people are prepared to buy Manchester United products. There is a revenue implication."
The financial implications of a takeover by Glazer are less certain.
If his offer to purchase the 28.9 percent share of Irish racehorse owners John Magnier and J.P. McManus is accepted, Glazer would own more than 30 percent of the team. By British law, he would be obligated to extend the offer to remaining shareholders -- 31,734 of whom own at least one share -- though they do not have to sell.
At what is believed to be about $5.53 a share, buying the 188.49-million shares he does not own would cost Glazer about $1.04-billion and make the team's total of 262.19-million shares worth about $1.45-billion.
Forbes magazine says Glazer is worth $1-billion. Considering Townsend said United is debt-free, the seeming disparity between cost and wherewithal has made United fans wonder if Glazer's ownership, and the substantial debt it could create, would compromise the team's ability to acquire top players and eventually affect the product on the field.
"The club, they believe, belongs to the fans," Pilger said. "They don't want to be a rich mogul's plaything and not be able to retain individual players and not be able to win."
But Ward said fans should have an open mind.
"We can't be afraid," said the former striker who set a Brighton season record of 36 goals in 1976-77 and also played for Nottingham Forest. "We have no idea what he's going to do. Obviously, he's looking at it as a moneymaker. It just depends. He has to have some people in the background who know something about it."
Wegerle wasn't buying it.
"That's just an investment, isn't it? It's just a business decision," he said. "He knows absolutely nothing about the game. It's insulting to English fans. How dare some American billionaire think he can come in and interfere with our club. How dare anyone, especially an American who doesn't really know a lot about the game."
Epilogue
Wegerle said he wanted to show his son what the Manchester United fuss is all about. So five years ago, he took Bryce, then 15, and some friends to see a game at 68,000-seat Old Trafford, which is often referred to, some might say pretentiously, as the "Theater of Dreams."
You know how 15-year-olds are, Wegerle said.
"They always have a lot to say. They know everything. We got there 45 minutes before the game. And when those kids got within a mile of the stadium and watched the fans and listened to them sing; inside the stadium before the game even started, I've never seen five or six 15-year-olds have nothing to say. They just sat there and took in what was happening around them."
Griffith, the USA Supporters club secretary, had a similar story.
"If you see the team and you see the stadium, and the history behind the club, you can't help but say, "I'm going to support these guys,' " he said.
Then there is Tampa's Paul Roe. Born in Manchester, he said his family emigrated to Canada when he was 8. Four years later, he traveled to England with a youth team and saw United practice at Old Trafford.
"I was brought up a Manchester United fan," said Roe, 45, the girls soccer coordinator for Hillsborough County United. "It's just an attractive club. You see the success they have. Kids growing up just want to play with Manchester United."
