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Man United
MAN UNITED....Now that you, the American taxpayer, more or less own insurance giant AIG, it turns out that you, the American taxpayer, are also the principal sponsor of Manchester United, thanks to a four-year, $100 million sponsorship deal signed in 2006. So this got me curious: how is our soccer football team doing?
Answer: not well. After winning the Premier League and the European Championship last year, they've started slowly this season with a loss to Liverpool, a win over Portsmouth, and a tie with Newcastle. Net result: 14th place. Next up is first place Chelsea on the 21st.
British readers should feel free to fill in details in comments. What do all those columns mean in the league table? What do the dotted lines mean on the BBC version of the table? I mean, if we're sponsoring these blokes, I suppose we ought to know something about them.
GamesPlayed Wins Draws Losses GoalsFor GoalsAgainst GoalDifference Points
Points (IIRC) are 3 for a win, 1 for a draw.
I think the dotted lines are showing the thresholds, e.g. being in the top few gets you into European competition the next season, being in the bottom few gets you relegated to a lower division (or maybe into a playoff with the best teams from the lower division - it may have changed since I left the UK in 91).
The US of A has become an investor in a sport that is favored by cheese-eating surrender monkeys! Another reason to fire Chris Cox!!!
Here is a guess from a occasional football watcher:
Bottom three teams get relegated from the Premier League (think going from NFL to AFL). Top four teams qualify for the UEFA Champions League (think Superbowl but with a true international champion). Fifth place qualifies for UEFA cup.
Personally I have been supporting Fulham because it has the most Americans of any team. The past couple years it has been close to being relegated but has been able to barely survive.
Dotted lines are:
Above the first dotted line - Champions League spot for next year.
Between the first and second dotted lines - UEFA Cup spot.
Below the final dotted line - relegation to the Championship (second division) for next year.
Manchester United has one match in hand at the moment -- winning that match would tie them for fourth -- and Cristiano Ronaldo just saw his first minutes in the Champions League match yesterday. I don't think they've got anything to worry about just yet. Arsenal got off to a rough start, too, until they got Fabregas back into the lineup.
(not English, but leaves Fox Soccer Channel on all weekend long)
Hmm, shouldn't Man United now change their shirts?
From the old one with their AIG logo to the new ones with a George W. Bush portrait? :)
Since they're now sponsored by the US government?
"Personally I have been supporting Fulham because it has the most Americans of any team."
Not anymore. You may want to become a Villa fan.
Even before this, the team were known to cynics as "Man USA" because they have American owners - the Glaziers, who also own (I believe) an American Football team.
Anyways, don't panic yet - this is VERY early days, and the table won't settle-down until mid-October or so! And with no salary caps or "draft", the "big 4" (of which Man U are one, along with Arsenal, Chelsea & Liverpool) are so entrenched that it would take a minor miracle for anyone else to keep them out of the key Champions League places by May.
Winning percentage doesn't necessarily correlate with profitability. More importantly, a lot of jobs have left Manchester, UK, and aren't coming back. So the people there are bitter, and they cling to their soccer... (ducks,hides)
"Not anymore. You may want to become a Villa fan."
Thanks for the update Al!
The commenters above are right about the dashed lines.
The Glazer family owns a controlling share of both the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the NFL and Manchester United.
Also, each team plays 38 games during its league schedule. ManU right now is the equivalent of an MLB team getting off to a 5 win, 7 loss start. Not great, but nothing to get really worked up about...unless you are a Mets, Yankees or Cubs fan.
Not that some sons of Manchester haven't been highly successful.
I actually think the new team jerseys should have a Ben Bernanke portrait on them.
Maybe this is a secret plot to bring soccer/football to North America -- Man United: America's Team
FYI--the Glazer family owns the NFL's Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Man U will come back. The most important games for them are the Champion's League games (amount the best teams in Europe). They played their first Champion's League game on Wednesday a nil-nil draw at home to Villarreal. Not a great result but they have time to improve.
Too funny - this definitely wins my blog post of the day award!
Kevin, FYI, there's no such thing as a 'tie' (well, there is, but it doesn't mean what you think it means*).
It's called a 'draw.'
* As in, a cup tie
- Hammers (forever blowing bubbles in San Francisco...)
as a longstanding Man U fan, let me assure you, kevin, that our team is co-favorite for the premier league (with chelsea), a favorite in the champions league, and in possession of some of the biggest stars in world soccer, including cristiano ronaldo, who, as noted above, is just returning from ankle surgery.
so we the people will do fine with our team, and if you want to follow them more closely, go to http://soccernet.espn.go.com/?cc=5901
for excellent coverage of premier league soccer.
Let Palin turn it around. She lives near a soccer field, and she has seen England on a map.
Manyoo lost a key defender for 6 weeks and they'er playing the team that's #1 on that chart this weekend. If they lose that, you can panic. This year it's not going to be a 2 horse, but likely 5 horse race. Early points thrown away to the likes of Newcastle will come back to haunt you.
Go Fulham!
There's a long way to go yet but put your money on Chelsea, they're playing great football at the moment.
I'm a Chelsea fan and in no way biased when I say that.
Come on you Blues!
I'm following Fulham for BBC6 Music radio. Their former goalie is a Washington native, and has now signed to play with the Seattle Sounders FC next season in the MLS.
Call it the Enron Field effect: companies that decide to blow their money on naming rights (or logos on team shirts) fall apart.
From left to right
Won, Drew, Loss, Fielded (goals scored), Awarded (goals scored by other team), Difference (the net goal difference), Points
3 points for a win
1 for a draw
The first dotted line is the teams that get a Champions League berth. The 2nd line is for UEFA cup (or could be for playoff for UEFA cup).
The lower lines are for relegation (these teams drop to Division 1, and 3 teams move up).
0 for a loss.
Ties in points are decided by goal difference.
It's really too early in the season to make any sort of predictions or declarations about a team. I say this because my dear Newcastle being in 16th place right now - and having lost to a frakking promoted team!! - makes me want to cry. So I keep telling myself it's too early to fret.
I would love it if the US developed more of an interest in footie, but I doubt it will happen. Most people still see it as the sport little kids play until they are coordinated enough for real red-blooded apple-pie American sports. /flag-wave
Man U is a game behind the rest of the league and a win would take them into at least 6th place.
Damn, this is one the times I miss Steve Gilliard!
For historical reasons we root for Blackburn in this household. It could be worse.
Calm down. Man United is so rich that it will certainly rise up the table and finish in the top half-dozen, so American honour will be saved from humiliation. But quite why AIG, which doesn't sell branded retail insurance in Britain, thought this a good deal for its shareholders I do not know. Cf. the sponsorship of Lance Armstrong's tour de France cycle team by the US Postal Service. Another team was sponsored by the Spanish charity for the blind, ONCE.
LondonLee
Chelsea(russian plutocrat owned via illgotten lucre) ?
although I have always like the intensity and "soccer above hoorah" approach of Michael Ballack...
Ok... I will support the Blues.
They're pretty much the New York Yankees of footy. Take that however you will.
On the bright side, they might be the one revenue-generating source the US has left.
Well, ok...but what I really want to know is, if I switch my insurance over to AIG, will I get an owner's discount. Really.
Oh, and if I go to a Manchester Utd. game, can I sit in the owners' box since I'm such a big sponsor?
Man UTd was also a case point of highly leveraged transaction, conducted against the wishes of the supporter's club.
Read junk bonds, lots of them.
So it will be interesting to see how well they do in a downturn in the advertising market.
High financial leverage and falling revenues is not a recipe for happiness.
What other teams have done in such a situation is sell players, thus leading to the downward death spiral of worse season performance and so lower advertising revenues, and so on downwards.
at least they're ahead of Northern Rock aka Newcastle. So the American Central Bank is better than the UK Bank!
Can we make them put "USA" on their jerseys? Or, as a colleague of mine suggested, given the ultimate source of the money for the bailout, maybe we should go with "treasurydirect.gov".
As a Spurs fan, I generally take every opportunity to root against ALL of the big four teams. Our dismal start this season, however, makes it a little harder to have too much fun at MUFC's expense over their early results (a draw with Newcastle! a team that just lost to Hull, for god's sake!).
Anyway, some relevant trivia: apparently fans of Man U had never heard of AIG when they bagged the jersey sponsorship, so one fan, when asked what it stood for quipped "Alex (as in Sir Alex Ferguson, the team's longstanding Scottish manager) Is God."
Also worth noting: MUFC is one of the few big teams in England that is actually profitable.
Come on You Spurs!
AIG has big Life and Casualty insurance businesses in Asia and Man U is the most popular team with Asian TV soccer viewers.
Damn, this is one the times I miss Steve Gilliard!
Yes, Steve (RIP&FtFY) was a Manyoo fan.
Kevin,
3 matches w/o C Ronaldo would be the equivalent of the Lakers being w/o Kobe for the 1st 6 games of the season. Good post.
"But quite why AIG, which doesn't sell branded retail insurance in Britain, thought this a good deal for its shareholders I do not know"
I believe Man Utd has a large worldwide fan base. Quite how this overlaps with AIG's markets, I wouldn't know: but Man Utd is very definitely a global brand, not just an English soccer team. So it may not be as dumb as you think.
Not that some sons of Manchester haven't been highly successful.
Potentially brilliant Rick-roll, because I clicked through expecting to see the Smiths, Joy Division, or maybe Oasis.
But Wikipedia says he was born in Merseyside, so that would make him closer to a Liverpudlian, unless you can vouch for his Manchester connection.
Manu U is the biggest single sports marque in the world. Man U script shirts sell in the tens of thousands all over the world for very large amounts of money. They tend to be made by wage slaves in pitiful pay places like Turkey so the margin for the club is enormous. Each shirt will have the AIG logo on it. Its actually a very effective way of raising a corporate profile, much as Ferrari kit did for the Marlboro brand all over the world. Kids wear the things in everyday life and adult fans have been known to do the same. Sales of uni stuff probably form the profit margins for big clubs in Europe.
All that having been said, Man U is owned by an American family and that probably had something to do with the AIG sponsorship. The American owners are roundly loathed by the legions of ordinary Man U fans. The team itself occupies the space the Yankees occupy in baseball. Far more money (from shirt sales?), belligerent attitude, and internal discord. They are not well liked in many circles of fans. Nevertheless, Old Trafford is the central temple of European football. It is a place of awe and reverence given the many extraordinary performances which have transpired there over the years.
"Let Palin turn it around. She lives near a soccer field, and she has seen England on a map."
More importantly, she can bomb Roman Abramovich from her back porch.
When do I get to sit in the corporate luxury box seats?
Manure won't take the top this year, but they are located very near the team that will.
Manchester City?
Soccer, because of its low-scoring nature, has a pretty big luck factor in individual games.
There's only been a few games played so far.
Given both those factors, drawing conclusions on Man U on the basis of four games is rather risky.
Over the course of a long season, however, and in the absence of talent-equalization programs like the drafts in the major American pro sports competitions, Man U will undoubtedly end up somewhere near the top of the table.
Remember folks, it's not a game, it's a match. Go Arsenal!
Being a sponsor of Man U does NOT make AIG an owner of MU, nor a shareholder, nor does it give AIG any control over the club. So The Fed is NOT investing in English football in any way.
All I want to know is, where can I buy my t-shirt?