Sir Jim Ratcliffe: I genuinely believe in the things that we’re doing
Jim Ratcliffe – All rights reserved
In a recent interview with the Sunday Times, Sir Jim Ratcliffe compared ownership at Manchester United and Nice… and said why he feels he won’t fail.
The Mancunian side is suffering from multiple woes: its league position, finances, a rocky start for a new manager, and regulatory limitations that give little prospect of a quick turnaround.
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“It can be unpleasant,” says Ratcliffe to the Sunday Times. “And I’ve probably failed on the having fun front… I don’t mind being unpopular because I get that nobody likes seeing Manchester United down where they are, and nobody likes the decisions we’re having to make at the moment.”
Since his arrival, majority shareholders the Glazer family have been much less visible. “So I’m getting all the bloody stick,” says Ratcliffe. As the Sunday Times put it, “This may seem strange, given [Ratciffe’s] business acumen, his wealth, his time in sport, but there is nothing to compare with the public glare of running Manchester United.”
“I don’t particularly enjoy going to watch Nice”
So why does he do it? He doesn’t talk of his boyhood dream so much these days, and says it’s not about the money. “That is 100 per cent not where I’ve come from at all. I’m making enough money in chemicals and oil and gas and all that stuff. It’s quite a difficult question. With Nice, in the French league, you can buy a club for £100 million. It’s much cheaper access. But I don’t particularly enjoy going to watch Nice because there are some good players but the level of football is not high enough for me to get excited.”
His analysis of Manchester United’s difficulties is that: “The owners just managed the club and left the football side alone and they’ve made a lot of very poor decisions over 12 years.”
“Manchester United is the best club in the world”
“If you look at coaches, a club can’t always get it right, but they should have found the best chief executive in the world, and the best coach in the world, because Manchester United is the best club in the world. Instead they got both of those decisions wrong.”
He considers “United completely missed the data revolution,” unlike smaller clubs who are now ahead of them in the League, having used data anlysis to guide their player spending.
Turning it around
He does see a way onward and upward, however. “So build a management team, then we have to get it back onto a stable footing, and this is our unpleasant year, when we have to make all those not particularly nice decisions, letting people go, that sort of stuff. That’ll all be done in the summer and then it’s about recruitment. You can have a fancy stadium, but if you haven’t got recruitment right you’re not going to win football matches.”
And he’s learning. “The best season that Nice has had is this one where we’ve not been allowed to get involved because of multi-club ownership rules,” he points out. “They’ve been so much better without our interference! Maybe there’s a lesson there as well, you know.”
“I genuinely believe in the things that we’re doing, and I do think that we’ve got the right people in place. I don’t think we’ll get there without making more mistakes because we’re not perfect, but I do think the trajectory will start to step up after the summer.”
And if that doesn’t happen? “If I fail, I’ll step down,” he says. “But I don’t think I’ll fail. As soon as we start playing good football and start winning, it will change.”