{"id":155094,"date":"2024-02-23T13:27:49","date_gmt":"2024-02-23T13:27:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2024\/02\/23\/why-sir-jim-ratcliffe-tried-to-buy-chelsea-before-man-utd\/"},"modified":"2024-02-23T13:27:49","modified_gmt":"2024-02-23T13:27:49","slug":"why-sir-jim-ratcliffe-tried-to-buy-chelsea-before-man-utd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2024\/02\/23\/why-sir-jim-ratcliffe-tried-to-buy-chelsea-before-man-utd\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Sir Jim Ratcliffe tried to buy Chelsea before Man Utd \u2013"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p><strong>Sir Jim Ratcliffe has revealed that opportunity is what led him to launch a bid for Chelsea prior to eventually investing in Manchester United, the club he supported growing up.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Ractliffe grew up near Oldham for the first ten years of his life until his family moved across the country to East Yorkshire in the early 1960s. But that first decade was still long enough to permanently solidify the now 71-year-old billionaire\u2019s footballing affinity.<\/p>\n<p>Having officially now become a shareholder and with control of football operations, Ratcliffe called it a \u201cboyhood dream\u201d coming true. Yet things could easily have been so different given that he had rivalled Todd Boehly for stewardship of Chelsea in the summer of 2022.<\/p>\n<p>Ratcliffe has justified his interest in buying\u00a0Chelsea, for whom a takeover was mandatory at the time following Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine and Roman Abramovich\u2019s relationship with the regime, because it gave him a chance to fulfil his ambition of owning a Premier League club.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have a collection of quite interesting sports clubs, Formula 1, America\u2019s Cup, cycling etc. but we\u2019ve always recognised that the biggest sport in the world is football and the Premier League is the biggest league in the world,\u201d he explained, via\u00a0<em>The Athletic<\/em>.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/01hq8sqk681mkzk2bfbk.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"Todd Boehly\"\/><\/figure>\n<p>Ratcliffe tried to beat Todd Boehly\u2019s consortium to Chelsea deal \/ Shaun Botterill\/GettyImages<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n<p>\u201cSo we\u2019ve always had an interest in having a Premier League club \u2013 but they don\u2019t come up very often, and at the time we had no inkling that\u00a0Manchester United\u00a0might ever be sold. So that\u2019s how we finished up in that Chelsea equation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ratcliffe was a late bidder in the Chelsea takeover process. His offer matched the \u00a34.25bn package put forward by the Boehly consortium but was submitted after the bidding deadline. It was then, in August 2022, that he\u00a0first expressed interest in buying Manchester United, although at that time there was still no real sign that the Glazer family was interested in selling. It all changed within a matter of weeks, though with the\u00a0November 2022 \u2018strategic alternatives\u2019 statement\u00a0opening the door.<\/p>\n<p>Now that he has a seat at the table at Old Trafford, Ratcliffe appears to be glad that the Chelsea deal never came off: \u201cI would say this but there is no comparison between Chelsea and Manchester United. The scale of Manchester United is incomparable to any of the London clubs.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><!-- AI CONTENT END 1 --><\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sir Jim Ratcliffe has revealed that opportunity is what led him to launch a bid for Chelsea prior to eventually investing in Manchester United, the club he supported growing up. Ractliffe grew up near Oldham for the first ten years of his life until his family moved across the country to East Yorkshire in the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":155095,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-155094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Why Sir Jim Ratcliffe tried to buy Chelsea before Man Utd \u2013 - Ghanamma.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2024\/02\/23\/why-sir-jim-ratcliffe-tried-to-buy-chelsea-before-man-utd\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why Sir Jim Ratcliffe tried to buy Chelsea before Man Utd \u2013 - Ghanamma.com\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Sir Jim Ratcliffe has revealed that opportunity is what led him to launch a bid for Chelsea prior to eventually investing in Manchester United, the club he supported growing up. 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