It is a measure of how strangers underestimate the size and potential of the support of Scottish football that the probable purchase of Glasgow Rangers by a consortium that includes the investment arm of the San Francisco 49ers of the NFL has passed under the radar on the English side of the border.
It is not much, the old enemy seems to be saying.
Scottish prefer to beg. The 50,000 starting season ticket holders of the Rangers make Ibrox a stadium with salty tickets permanently, while European success in any of the UEFA tournaments would be a carnival. Around 200,000 went to Manchester for the 2008 UEFA Cup final.
It has been a recent painful story. The attempts of the Club to make land in Celtic have been obsessive and, ultimately, desperate. They currently have 16 points drifting in them in the Premier League Scottish and debt of £ 45 million.
The influential parties throughout the club saw that the cash was hemorrified, year after year, and felt that such a football institution, with such a fans base, was mature for the new money and a new perspective.
“We needed someone to mix in the right circles to present our case for international investment,” one of them tells me.
The 50,000 starting season ticket holders of the Rangers make Ibrox a permanently exhausted stadium, while European success in any of the UEFA tournaments would be a carnival
The rangers aim to demolish Celtic from their hanger, but they feel 16 points drifting in the league
The president of San Francisco for San Francisco 49ers Enterprises, has been seen in the Rangers Games
And that's where Andy Mason entered. He is a Gulf headquarters, with a history of property and finance, whose work has included four years with the Government of Abu Dhabi, leading the sponsors to which the EAU describe as “national importance” projects.
His connections with those of influence behind the scene in Rangers, where he started the season for 10 years, date back to the 1980s. Going further, it was a dance dance in a final of the Rangers Cup in Hampden, then presented the owner Sir David Murray for the deceased Sean Connery, an investment client of his at that time.
It was Mason who was asked to start consultations about who could be willing to invest. “I needed to find someone who understood Glasgow, Scotland and Soccer,” he tells me, from his office in Dubai.
At times like this, real and intuitive connections, something that transcends the merely transactional, are what counts. The Mason network included another exiled Scottish, the investment banker based in the United States, Allan, in Californian Bank Montminy & Co – who brought together new investors.
“Instinctively understood the potential,” says Mason. “I was able to push the idea for that line.” If this agreement occurs, it will have been Scottish helping Scots.
Allan had worked with the American health insurance tycoon Andrew Cavenagh in an agreement to buy QPR, which had not reached anything. Cavenagh liked Allan's approach and the acute sensation of British football. He, in turn, sought association and experience and approached the York family, owners of the 49ers, on them taking a control participation.
“By investing together, they are obtaining the collective benefit and disincing the risk,” says Mason. “The 49ers contribute to the table all the experience they have in the franchises and that is gold dust.”
What listens to the most of the experts who are part of this agreement is the enormous without exploiting that investors feel there, in Ibrox. What could be an agreement of £ 120 million feels like a robbery.
Rake Celta in earnings year after year due to its superior players' trade model
The 49ers can update the rangers with their experience in investments and commitment of fans
While the Rangers work, the Celtic raising profits year after year due to their exchange model of higher players, which sees them bring around £ 25 million for a player almost every summer; its upper recruitment system, which is based on analysis in a way that the Rangers do not; and its superior marketing and sponsorship operations.
“These are precisely the types of opportunities that 49ers have the history to update,” Mason tells me. 'They like the participation of fans, data, stadium. American Money understands the participation of fans, infrastructure investment, how to monetize an investment of £ 50 million.
'I think this is an opportunity that allows everything in the rangers to be updated. It allows the club to return to the avant -garde. It is the culture that earns money, not money.
Several of those who have spoken point to the work that the 49ers have made in Leeds United, superior of the reduced debt championship in £ 200 million, as a sign of what could come if the agreement continues.
“The Buddine test seems to be Leeds,” says Mason. The 49ers marathhel, president of Elland Road, has been seen in several games of the Rangers.
The questions surround if the Scottish regulatory rules that prevent the owners of a club from possessing another could affect the 49ers plans. But the sources suggest that the agreement could be structured to ensure that separate legal entities have rangers and reads. “There is a real will in Scotland for this to happen,” says a source.
Among those who look with great interest are Graeme Souness, who returned home to Scotland to manage the club for a glorious period from 1986 to 1991.
Leeds United could even end as a food club for Rangers if the agreement is a roaring success
Leeds' success at the top of the championship is considered a proof of the 49ers experience
“Any possible buyer of Glasgow Rangers will quickly understand that they are not only buying a football club, but they are buying an institution,” Souness tells me. 'If they were the 49ers, there is early talk that the Rangers could be a food club for Leeds.
'But if they had to take some more steps, I think I could vice versa. There is great potential to bring this club to another level.
The heartbreaking impact that Trump is Putin's puppet
A young woman I know has just lost her father for war in Ukraine.
Only one of the innumerable consequences of Putin's actions, currently emboldened by his new Stooge Trump.
Our political gifts flatter Trump's bully because they fear him. But the United States will organize a World Football Cup and an Olympic Games in the period of its presidency, and will seek to take the self -reflective glory when it carries its considerable presence in stadiums.
Broad opportunities for crowds to have accumulated the appropriate mockery and ridicule that has been so missing.
The World Cup Games and the Olympic Games in the US
Another Dyer performance
No one would say The football factoryA film that glorifies hooliganism, was a wonderful clock when it was projected more than 20 years ago, but its ugly intensity led you directly to that underground world.
The long -awaited sequel, March powderThat adds cocaine to the mixture, its exaggeration is not supposed. It is an incessant scoria film: rude, disgusting, repetitive, with a desperately judged “humor”, which offers new evidence of Danny Dyer's unfortunate ingredient on the screen.
The scourge of hooliganism is very alive and well in this country, for reasons that are beyond this film to articulate.
In the last week, we have had evidence, of the published annual accounts of Cardiff, that Emiliano Sala's legal fight is really the money for them.
What are Cardiff's true motivations?
Cardiff City's legal fight for his responsibility for the transfer rate of £ 15 million agreed with Nantes for Argentine striker Emiliano Sala, who died on a death trap plane that took him to South Wales, has always seemed like an accelerated money without class.
In the last week, we have had evidence, of the published annual accounts of Cardiff, that it is really the money for them.
The club, which this summer will fight for the £ 15 million for the Commercial Court of Nantes, after the decisions against them anywhere else, has earned £ 12 million before that hearing when selling most legal claim rights to a third party.
'An exceptional gain' is how loss club accounts describe this, without the slightest appreciation of dirt.