Sep 02 2008
Sheikh It Up!
It’s official: I can no longer relate to the English Premier League.
Yesterday, overthrown Thailand prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, whose assets were frozen by court order in his homeland, sold Manchester City FC to Abu Dhabi United Group, the investment arm of the Abu Dhabi royal family, for about $400 million, or enough money for Shinawatra to buy an island somewhere that will allow him and his family to evade the reach of the Thai justice system forever.
The Abu Dhabi royal family controls approximately one TRILLION dollars in assets. That’s 12 zeros, people. By comparison, Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich is a relative pauper with assets totaling a mere $45 billion. And ADUG has already shown up Abramovich on the transfer market by swiping Chelsea target Robinho from under his nose. They also put in a last-minute £30 million+ bid for Dimitar Berbatov, forcing Manchester United to pony up that extra 5 million quid it didn’t want to pay to get the sulking Bulgarian. Similar bids for David Villa and Mario Gomez were turned away.
For all intents and purposes, these people have all the money in the world and can do whatever they want with it — and they’ve decided that it might be fun to take a mid-tier Premier League club like Man City and make it the biggest damn football club on the planet. They’re already talking about making mad-money bids for Cristiano Ronaldo, Kaka, Fernando Torres, Cesc Fabregas and other big name superstars. Chances are that within a month, we’ll hear them talk about building a £400 million, 80,000-seat stadium somewhere in the Eastlands. With straight cash, homey.
Basically, Man City is to these people what a new video game is to you or me. ADUG wants to build a real-life XI the way you or I would build a Champions Road XI in Pro Evolution Soccer. Why? Because they can. And because it’s fun.
Meanwhile, I have a voting share in a Conference club that just sold its best young player to Bristol City for a whopping £140,000, and I’m waiting on Yardbarker’s ad network to drop $70 in my Paypal account so that I can keep that voting share for another year. And I’ve trying to figure out how long it will take me to save up $2,000 so that I can go play Texas Hold ‘Em again in Las Vegas next year, because winning a sit-and-go at the Mirage has me thinking I might actually be able to play poker.
I suppose ADUG is gambling here, too. They can’t just buy a Champions League trophy. They have to put together a team that will go out there and win it. What happens if they don’t? And if they go out and spend half a billion dollars on players, exactly how long will it take them to get a return on investment? These are still business people, after all. They can’t be buying into the Premier League just because they have money to burn and want to play, right? Right!?
Seriously, I can’t relate to this. It’s like I’m getting a glimpse of Greek gods fiddling in the lives of mortal ken and realizing just how tiny I am in the scheme of things. This is all too big and too insane, and it makes me want to avert my eyes, because if I don’t, I’m going to start looking at the $3.69 I’m paying for a gallon of gas and wondering how much of that money just bought Robinho, and that’s just no good.
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