Why is Roman Abramovich’s takeover of Chelsea being welcomed and Glazer’s being scorned?

It is no secret that everyone loves to hate Manchester United in England. It is also a well known fact that United fans love to be hated.

Never ones to shy away from controversy, they even privilege their club over their nation, singing: “We all agree, United are better than England.” You can just imagine how much contempt their other songs hold for rival clubs. Oh, by the way, ‘rival’ here implies gross pluralism - United find enemies in all corners.

American poet Emily Dickinson once wrote: “Success is counted sweetest, by those who ne’er succeed.” Again, regrettably, ‘success’ here is perhaps more far-reaching than even Dickinson intended.

Were United’s good fortunes just confined to the pitch they would perhaps be met with veneration but United are also rich. They are not a penniless success story and how could they be? Everyone has heard of Manchester United and while David Beckham might be making his name with Real Madrid now, he spent perhaps his prettiest years of pageant under the patriarchal tutelage of Sir Alex Ferguson- why they did not part sooner is beyond your correspondent.

So when a person from, let’s say, Malaysia pulls on a United jersey, you can see why the blue-collar, hard-nosed portion of Manchester cringes. Their club dies a little more every time the coffers fill up. Sad when your subsistence also becomes your bane.

But those were the good old days, those problems manageable because United were still that- united. Now the identity politics are different because the club, for the first time, have had the effects of global appeal come to their doorstep.

Malcolm Glazer, a 70 something entrepreneur, an enthusiast of sport teams, recently decided to buy 70% of Manchester United. And, lest I forget, he is an American.

Ah, there’s the rub. One can argue to great lengths that the real reason United fans are discontent is because Glazer has taken a massive loan to complete his purchase. Indeed, the conscientious United fan must have the financial concern at the top of the ‘10 reasons to hate Glazer’ list. But the majority of fans loath Glazer because of who he is. An American coming to buy a club which represents the British ethic (and indeed to some more than that), does not sit well with the self-conscious United fan. That he has done it with borrowed money is an outright scandal.

If Glazer thinks he can win the Old Trafford faithful over with a few appearances – which in the recent Champions League qualifier meant a burning effigy – then he has a long way to go in understanding how different it is to support Manchester United and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (Glazer’s American football team).

The culture clash could not be more emphatic. European snobbery is premised on many spheres of life and in sport, football is seen as something the continent has ‘over the Americans’. As long as the Americans were trying to understand it and named their local teams New York Metrostars, things were comedic, because the ‘Americans would never get it.’

But suddenly the plot has turned horribly wrong; Glazer’s acquisition of United left the fans wondering when the Americans started getting it.

Glazer knows the massive marketing potential of United and with such clout comes a price. Glazer paid that price and is ready to take his new venture the whole way. The question then is why is Roman Abramovich’s takeover of Chelsea being welcomed and Glazer’s being scorned? Surely if Glazer funded his purchase with loan, Abramovich’s blithe spending cannot be good either.

The American-bashing explains a lot of it and Gavin Hamilton, editor of World Soccer, suggests that the public acceptance of Abramovich is largely due to his urbanity. When comparing Glazer and his Russian counterpart, Hamilton writes: “Abramovich is every inch the sophisticated European, not a slightly strange-looking foreigner who boasts about how little his trousers cost.” (World Soccer, July 2005)

Glazer’s style may be quaint and certainly offensive to English sensibilities but he can only truly be judged after some time goes by. Until then, United will have to get used to not only being hated but also being laughed at.

A Yank owns the Mancs? Well, you can just imagine what songs might be coming United’s way.