When Gaddafi Tried To Buy Manchester United

by Panzer
The Glazers can't claim to be the most popular family in the city, but their
desire to buy Manchester United in 2005 was at least understandable. It certainly wasn't unique.
The club has long been one of the most sought after pieces of footballing real estate.
Ever since a local butcher by the name of Louis Edwards collected enough shares to effectively
take control of the club in the 1960s for £40,000, passing them on to his son Martin when
he died in 1980, the club has bewitched a slew of the world's richest and most dangerous men,
hoping to capitalise on one of global sport's iconic brands.
There was the disgraced fraudster, former MP, newspaper proprietor,
war hero, alleged Israeli spy and Oxford United owner Robert Maxwell, who made a £10 million bid
for Manchester United in 1984. It was rejected, which was just as well. When he died after falling
off his yacht near the Canary Islands seven years later, it emerged that he'd been siphoning
off hundreds of millions of pounds from his companies' pension funds to stave off bankruptcy.
There was the brief, slightly ridiculous attempt in 1989 by property tycoon Michael
Knighton to buy the club for £20 million. That failed, but only after Knighton had dressed in
a full United kit and treated the Old Trafford crowd to a few minutes of low quality keepy-uppy.
Media mogul Rupert Murdoch was next in 1998,
looking to make the club the lynch pin of his BSkyB broadcasting empire with a £623 million bid.
The New Labour government referred the deal to the Monopoly and Mergers Commission
and it was rejected on the grounds it “would damage the quality of British football”.
At one point a strongman dictator that ruled Myanmar even considered a crack at owning
the club. Amongst the 2010 trove of US diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks,
founded by Julian Assange, was a document from the US embassy in Myanmar that claimed
General Than Shwe was lining up a £634 million bid to buy United in the hope of
distracting the native population from a plethora of local issues
Alas, the General's dreams of walking out on to the Old Trafford pitch fell by the wayside. But
even that tale pales in comparison to the one potential Manchester United owner who got away:
Colonel Muammar “Mad Dog” Gaddafi, Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution of Libya.
According to Cardiff chairman Mehmet Dalman, when Manchester United's ownership
was in the balance back in 2005, a late bid arrived from a surprising potential owner.
“People don’t realise how the deal was a whisker away from going to Libya.
Gaddafi almost bought the club. That’s how close it got — literally you’re
talking about a few hours,” Dalman told the Sunday Times in a 2018 interview.
The chance to own Manchester United is thought to have come about thanks to a feud between
Sir Alex Ferguson and the club’s majority shareholders J.P McManus and John Magnier
over the stud rights of a race horse, the Rock of Gibraltar. The conflict ended up in court,
souring his relationship with two important allies.
Whoever controlled Magnier's and McManus's shares controlled the club. At the time
Mehmet Dalman was running the investment arm of Germany's Commerzbank. The British,
Turkish Cypriot -born financier had bought 2.5 per cent of United shares on a whim