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WI: Gaddafi Buys Man Utd

Milo

George Brown Apologist
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Apparently Gaddafi was close to buying Man Utd back in 2004. Gaddafi was a football fan atleast in the early days, from what sources i've seen and did end up will a small share in Juventus. So lets say it goes through and Gaddafi buys the club instead of Glazers and what happens assuming we ignore butterflies and the Arab Spring still happens.
 
Apparently Gaddafi was close to buying Man Utd back in 2004. Gaddafi was a football fan atleast in the early days, from what sources i've seen and did end up will a small share in Juventus. So lets say it goes through and Gaddafi buys the club instead of Glazers and what happens assuming we ignore butterflies and the Arab Spring still happens.

This would be a public relations problem for Manchester United.
 
Apparently Gaddafi was close to buying Man Utd back in 2004. Gaddafi was a football fan atleast in the early days, from what sources i've seen and did end up will a small share in Juventus. So lets say it goes through and Gaddafi buys the club instead of Glazers and what happens assuming we ignore butterflies and the Arab Spring still happens.
My first instinct is that the Powers That Be basically say “oh no you don’t” from the get-go - aside from the public relations, it poses some fundamental issues if one team has the resources of a nation-state behind it - but now I’m wondering if Man U might be used, successfully or not, as a carrot in international negotiations over oil prices / the War on Terror / human rights / what have you.
 
My first instinct is that the Powers That Be basically say “oh no you don’t” from the get-go - aside from the public relations, it poses some fundamental issues if one team has the resources of a nation-state behind it - but now I’m wondering if Man U might be used, successfully or not, as a carrot in international negotiations over oil prices / the War on Terror / human rights / what have you.

You have a touching faith in the premier league.

Given all the other big club sales, I'm convinced that lucifer would be allowed to buy man u if the money was there let alone gadaffi.
 
There's a gonzo timeline to be had where Qaddafi buys the team, but in the embarrassment that follows the collapse of the regime his holding is revoked before there's a clear buyer to pick up the pieces. The UK government finds itself owning a football team, and obviously tries to flog it off- and amidst all the usual suspects, you have a few die hard fans try to start a crowd-funded cooperative to buy back their team, as was suggested during this year's Super League fiasco.

For maximum banter, you'd deliberately have this mirror the actual Arab revolutions- tankies explaining that Gadaffi was a very good owner, and these western backed 'fans' were actually all racist hooligans, France and Britain backing rival oligarchs who want to buy the club, boats of players crossing the Ship Canal to start new lives in Liverpool (that's enough- ed.)
 
Hmm. Gaddafi had been relatively rehabiliated by that point to the point of Blair quite literally embracing him, and would go onto get rather deeply involved in the LSE. So it's important to distinguish between eighties Gaddafi and 2000s Gaddafi's official position. In terms of direct involvement of people with rather hefty political standing you also had Shinawatra owning City. It was a fairly loose time in terms of ownership. But.. there's loose ownership and then there's Gaddafi. Highly unlikely there wouldn't be massive questions asked all the way up to government level, particularly given seeing off Murdoch's attempted takeover was only a few years past. Even if this goes ahead as it were, not sure it'll go ahead.

The source for this seems to be solely Mehmet Dalman as well, so who knows.
 
Hmm. Gaddafi had been relatively rehabiliated by that point to the point of Blair quite literally embracing him, and would go onto get rather deeply involved in the LSE. So it's important to distinguish between eighties Gaddafi and 2000s Gaddafi's official position. In terms of direct involvement of people with rather hefty political standing you also had Shinawatra owning City. It was a fairly loose time in terms of ownership. But.. there's loose ownership and then there's Gaddafi. Highly unlikely there wouldn't be massive questions asked all the way up to government level, particularly given seeing off Murdoch's attempted takeover was only a few years past. Even if this goes ahead as it were, not sure it'll go ahead.

The source for this seems to be solely Mehmet Dalman as well, so who knows.
And Gaddafi's son too, apparently.

which isn't exactly much corroboration, but it's something.
 
There's a gonzo timeline to be had where Qaddafi buys the team, but in the embarrassment that follows the collapse of the regime his holding is revoked before there's a clear buyer to pick up the pieces. The UK government finds itself owning a football team, and obviously tries to flog it off- and amidst all the usual suspects, you have a few die hard fans try to start a crowd-funded cooperative to buy back their team, as was suggested during this year's Super League fiasco.

For maximum banter, you'd deliberately have this mirror the actual Arab revolutions- tankies explaining that Gadaffi was a very good owner, and these western backed 'fans' were actually all racist hooligans, France and Britain backing rival oligarchs who want to buy the club, boats of players crossing the Ship Canal to start new lives in Liverpool (that's enough- ed.)
I can already imagine tankies (and other clueless progressives) calling United fans xenophobic because they rather want the club to play a local las from the youth academy, than get someone in from, say, Italia.
 
Hmm. Gaddafi had been relatively rehabiliated by that point to the point of Blair quite literally embracing him, and would go onto get rather deeply involved in the LSE. So it's important to distinguish between eighties Gaddafi and 2000s Gaddafi's official position. In terms of direct involvement of people with rather hefty political standing you also had Shinawatra owning City. It was a fairly loose time in terms of ownership. But.. there's loose ownership and then there's Gaddafi. Highly unlikely there wouldn't be massive questions asked all the way up to government level, particularly given seeing off Murdoch's attempted takeover was only a few years past. Even if this goes ahead as it were, not sure it'll go ahead.

The source for this seems to be solely Mehmet Dalman as well, so who knows.

I just remembered when Murdoch wanted to buy the People’s House in 1990 after the Revolution.

In another timeline either he or the Japanese Government own the second largest building in the world and don’t know what to do with it like the many Romanian governments because holy shit is it big. It’s like owning all of Croydon.
 
My first instinct is that the Powers That Be basically say "Oh no you don't" from the get-go - aside from the public relations…
Late 2003/early 2004 was when Libya started to dismantle its weapons of mass destruction capabilities which, alongside accepting responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing and paying compensation, allowed it to be welcomed in from the cold diplomatically. With potential oil and gas deals there's going to be a lot of pressure, from both commercial and governmental quarter, not to cause offence.


There's a gonzo timeline to be had where Qaddafi buys the team, but in the embarrassment that follows the collapse of the regime his holding is revoked before there's a clear buyer to pick up the pieces.
I would assume that any purchase would be by the Libyan government, or an agency of such, as there would be questions of where Qaddafi got the money if he bought it personally. From his point of view there isn't any real difference. Of course once the civil war kicks off it'll still be owned by the Libyan government, the question just becomes which government.
 
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