And welcome to the double pivot the world's most agreeable sock around looks podcast I am Michael Kayley we are back and we have been talking about Manchester United because Manchester in it are the most Compelling story in English football right now off the pitch There is just it's really weird that I club this rich and this big is doing this many odd things and making this many headlines for things They're not on the pitch and so what we want to do today is really get into what those actual headlines have been What the club is actually doing that's causing there to be all of this news about it and we have again We've got the perfect guest to go through what's actually happening at Manchester United enjoy my good man who can not introduce the guest Let's do it with the music on the way and as well as please download subscribe because happy podcast is patreon.com slash double pivot Come hang out in the discord talk about Manchester United to your heart's content There's a lot of talk going on in the podcast discussion channel Mostly about baseball for some reason but anyway, let me introduce the perfect guest He's done tons of reporting on Manchester United like not like us sitting around talking about ideas and thoughts this up But like actually bringing new information about Manchester United into the world. He writes for the athletic Thanks for being on. Thanks for having me guys So let's just start talking about what Manchester United are doing right now with the club there again What two rounds of redundancies or layoffs since Sir John Radcliffe came in is that right? Yeah, that's right I suppose you know if you take a kind of broader view than that it goes back to the glazer family obviously over the club They are the majority owners of the club still they underwent what was described as a strategic review process That goes as far back as the World Cup in Qatar in 2022 I remember that's when that was all sort of kicking off just before that and we didn't know at that point Whether they wanted to sell the club.
I don't think they really did whether they wanted to sell a part of the club Whether they just wanted a small stake or if they were just see what would happen And the resolution that they came to was to sell this minority stake to Sir John Radcliffe very wealthy businessman Probably understanding the billionaire that by calling a very wealthy businessman Big petro catacombs magnate and also had you know, it was done very very well actually during the whole period But you've got the more in trade and lots of different things going on about time Sainty's a lifelong just a nice supporter initially. We thought he'd just been given sporting control of the club. So, you know, for I don't want to kind of patronize your listeners in any way, but just to explain what that would mean It would be you know choosing the head coach choosing recruitment, you know players that assign football data analytics Medical step, you know, the medical step all those things are going to the day-to-day Performance side of the club because you know, they also had this guy so they Brails first He has a history team sky cycling in the office cycling interesting history. Maybe a different podcast.
It was in fact a different podcast we did last week. Right, really So it all made sense really from a performance aspect You know the glazes were a lot of times and so I was excited really struggle, you know To get a grip of the football operations in the general sense of being from a commercial point of view Actually, they do on the club if you speak big caveat But you take away debt interest payments and Borrowings and dividends in the actual commercial operations. I mean even in a recent you ate the benchmark people You still haven't just united with the largest operating Copy, you know, so when you take away the cost of salaries and travel and all that kind of thing You know, my United still bring in huge amounts of revenues And that was largely because the sponsorship is this under resilience of this global grant Now what happened was as soon as we got into the building everyone kind of realized you can't really just Side for not supporting operations from the business operations because they're so into over Um, you know in a football club in 2020 40 2025 that almost immediately became no anymore than that And really what you've now seen is a complete set of control to assert any control from an operational point of view rather than you know shares and shares and Shadowings and that kind of what you see is actually rapidly now I wouldn't say you know because nothing still nothing happens without the blessing of the blazer, right? They can still at any point say we don't agree with that with the majority owners Um, but the entire executive leadership team format of Manchester United has changed over the past year or so So the ceo left in the middle of join the strategic review that was Richard Arnold the incident ceo Patrick Stewart It was previously the legal counsel.
Um has also left you've seen job murder the football director leave obviously area to help the coach Um, all sorts of people you know, people who Around the sponsorship division people who ran the emerging business division Um, the chief financial officer so lots of stuff that goes way beyond the reading of football operations has changed And you know, and that's really because the football for the strategy that ios said they were trying to bring in realize on a I suppose a financial reimagining of the way Manchester so come back and be with any questions Yeah, I think that's really really helpful to baseline it that One of the things that was a new development was the degree to which they were taking control of all of the operations of Manchester United As a corporation like one story here was this rich guy's gonna come in and he's paid an extra amount of money So he can like make some cool transfer psychics But in fact what he was getting and what he seemed to have really wanted was business control and managing this club on all levels And this is why some of the things are you've been on have been all of these new late two rounds of major layoffs Which i'm out to like nearly a third of club employees. It seems like it's a number Yeah, well, it's not gonna be around sort of 450 or so that would be that would have been laid off at that It's a it's a it's clearly a sensitive topic great because you know a lot of these people are We're talking ordinary people compared to like the normal people supporting institutions, but I think most people you know when we've been recording on us as you know over the past decade have Even those who are working within the club have often said it feels like the club has too many employees Right, it feels like the club is horrible work. I've loaded it in some way now And if you do sort of headcount comparisons with kind of also never call like it's not what's dramatically different But it was you know what I think Liverpool was really similar to be there by the end you're talking about just over a thousand at the highest point But other clubs, you know what was smaller that the flip sound that is not just you know It's a claim to the biggest club in the world right? So it's obviously surprising that they might have the most employees and they had offices in London in Hong Kong And things like that, but what you saw very quickly was a desire from any of us to trim costs and then that That is something they've done with previous businesses, you know when they've gone in they were they use it right sizing Transformation, you know that those are the kind of words that you know Anyone who's ever been laid off.
I'm sure will be really familiar with it But at the same time I think what you also have to bear in mind that it's unique to only Manchester United is you've had over the last few years these Increasingly rigorously imposed profits stability rules coming from the Premier League and also you wait for their own version of that as well And that means you can only lose so much money in a three-year period in 105 million And Manchester United as a business has been losing money Right for the last five years to be over 350 million or so and as a result that It's not just a thing of you know, well billionaires just suck this up Actually, there is a potential sporting impact when you are losing none of it We saw not some forest art points We saw evidence and dot points who knows what's gonna happen with you know Manchester City and Chelsea and investigations So there is there may well be an ideological element to it, but there is also an element to this up Money and I just can't keep using money and also in any sense. It's not healthy for any business you just keep using money Now the question is and this is why it becomes maybe more controversial. What's the most effective way of going about that, right? Now the most effective way is to drive revenues in within football clubs is It is in many ways pretty simple, right?
It's when football matches It's as finished as high as possible in the table qualify for European competition as a champion to be competition revenue Cool customer when you meet your revenues and he takes care of itself, right? Money and I will never lose money if that could do it You know first I could in the Premier League and in the last stage of the champion to be And the other way is smart player trading which we know for the past decade has been pretty disastrous at money Not only have they bought badly, they've also sold pretty badly Very very rare they sold players who were happy with that I can't remember they've sold any more for over 30 million pounds, right? In that time, maybe not common bottom of the common they've been to now pretty well as people down James But really they have because in the way that the screws in the United It just sort of devalues players in the market just kind of destroys reputations and values That's what we've seen so the two big levers are be good on the pitch and also be good at player trading Now any else have set about, right? You know, they've revamped the recruitment department, they've changed personnel within there, but that takes time, right?
You know, if we're being, you know, the generous interpretation is that takes time, it doesn't happen overnight So one of the more immediate levers that a business is able to pull in order to reimagine the health of the finances Well, that's how you can staff is redundancies It's also, as we've seen this week, ticket price rises for supporters Now all of that, that begs the question of, you know, are everyday staff and supporters paying the price for the mistakes that survey while the people at the whole club have made under the performance of the players as well? Yeah, and this is, this is really the crux of the issue, right? And one of the things that I really wanted to drill down on is Radcliffe is out there saying things like, well, if we didn't do these kinds of quote-unquote, white sizing actions, we wouldn't be able to pay our bills You know, we wouldn't, this club would cease to be able to function Now what we're talking about here is they're up against the limits of PSR And those are two very different claims, right? One is an accounting claim, which is saying that we are losing too much money to be able to be invested in a club The other is a practical claim saying we are losing too much money to pay our bills And yeah, and the question is, what's the truth there?
Radcliffe has also said what he said, as far as I understand, Manchester City might not have gone out business by Christmas, right? They made a cash flow issue to a certain extent, and there's definitely not enough cash in the business But Manchester City might not be well down, right? Like, let's be realistic about this, and I think also, you know, there's a bit of a kind of night riding to the rescue element of what he's saying, you know, riding with them, and he hasn't jacks in money By the way, he's had equity in return, apparently But, you know, the training ground investment was around 50 million pounds I think it's $300 million was put in when he kind of further increased his equity You know, a lot of that, almost won immediately on playing off with old and credit instead of team, but they still have a lot of players So, yes, that money certainly helped, but you do have to accept those counterfactuals here Where, if you do have to do a deal with the blazers, then the product would be Radcliffe It doesn't deal with someone else, right? It's very unlikely which remains, what's it, what's previously, maybe they would have got, you know, they've spoken to Apollo previously, maybe they get there, maybe they get an error, you know?
Manchester United would have had someone, so I understand what he's doing there I understand what he's saying, you know, the cuts that have been made have been very extensive And some of them have appeared, and I think even he accepted it into going level last week But some of those, you know, on the election, maybe don't look great, you know, the cuts to the former players association Which is about a £40,000 cut in where, and these are players who kind of played Manchester United in the 60's and 70's when there wasn't much money in football And it helps to cover costs of funerals and things like that, and it's really, you know Money that Manchester United should still be providing, except by taking meals away from staff members and not paying for travel for staff members The cut final last year, but then there's also, to be fair, they have targeted some of the big payments as well, so, you know, so, right, it's been on a 2 million a year, that's a door issue, for the past decade Is that necessary? Some people would say, given what he gave to the club actually, 2 million a year out of the club that has revenues over 600 to 700 million And continues to add value, you know, whatever he appears, and so, maybe that's fair enough, others will say, by the way, so, you know, you know, corporate credit cards have been slashed down I know that, you know, when I'm nice and now, sort of renewing player contracts and talking about signs of the centre, they're talking about salaries that are far more performance-based, incentivised So, it does look like every part of the club is being asked to make sacrifices in some way, now the exception to that course is the majority owners of the club, who have, you know, sold 20, 26, 27, was it now? 28, 29% And taken in 1.3 billion, then that's going to be working more So, next word if you can get it? Right, yeah, that's the effort in every single room at all traffic, right, and that is the challenge at Radcliffe at the moment, is bearing the brunt of that, some of it's early, sort of it, maybe that's right I will say, though, that this entire discussion flips things on its head a little bit When Radcliffe comes in, the selling point is like, Manchester United have all this money And I have expertise in management and sports, and I will be better able to leverage all this money that Manchester United has into success on the field And a year later, maybe not quite even a year later, what we're being told is, well, actually, I'm using my business success to transform Manchester United from a team that is wasting their money into a more streamlined operation It is a complete reversal of what, like, Manchester United fans were sold at the time of this investment Yeah, completely, and by the way, any else's record in school, isn't that good?
You know, it has to be a bit involved in other things, cycling and sailing and some sponsorships and a lot of that city and, of course, the French club, Nice, which was being mixed, I would say, at best, it has to be very low moments and better moments So, you know, that's supposed sort of sporting expertise, I think was always pretty questionable I think what he's done is a kind of classic thing, but when I take over any type, I mean, it's a kind of ridiculous situation anyway, you have a minority partner Okay, so it's an individual investor, but the minority owner is not in the club, I mean, it's just very, very unusual, right, as a starting point But I think if you even go beyond that, what he's done is very common tactic, but once you get in the building, you kind of trash everything that's come before, right, and you say we are cleaning up the mess But he has to do that sort of constantly, but without actually criticizing the people he's in business with, which makes it very strange back So you saw last weekend, I mean, he keeps doing type interviews at the moment, which is just over the times, over the weekend, where he really trashed the two previous two executives at the United States, Richard Arnolds, you know, saying, you know, this was a rugby man, you really know anything about football, saying he wanted to tolerate it edwardswards I mean, there's a lot of people who, probably Manchester United people, have tolerated edwards, so it's not that he's necessarily wrong, it's more just he is having, he is either by a strategy or because he is, you know, an old guy who's who's left, trash, repeatedly trashing what's come before, explaining in his eyes, you know, this is how low it's got, this is the journey, this is the Everest we're going to have to climb, to take it back, maybe that's trying to survive it more time because, you know, the awkward bit for him is that things have got worse as he got in the building, right, the team has got worse, since he got in the building, I'm just talking about lead performance, cut performance, it's been really bad, you know, and some of the big decisions that he's taken from a sporting perspective you know, extending out ten-hounds contract at the end of last season, then firing him a few months later, that's cost the club over ten million pounds, hiring Dan Ashworth, it was about eight months, then to him departing, cost the club almost another five million so, what's interesting is the ticket rises, for example, they've been announced this week, and I've told them they'll raise the club just over 50 million or so, or is that paying for those mistakes, equally, you know, you can make the same argument about what it says that the Manchester United accounts actually said, like some of the first weight from the government's men, it was completed, you know, and then all of a sudden, in the middle of the season, about a second round, is that related to performance on the field, being out of the Champions League, most likely, for a second season, I'd say, when we were openly where Manchester finishing at the table is basically, it's not just the case of whether you finish six or four teeth makes a difference, each position placing in the Premier League, you earn millions of pounds, it costs them quite a million, just by finishing, four teeth instead of seventh so, there's a lot of shortfalls that have to be filled in due to the performance, and then there's also 200 million pounds of fees spent last summer in the transfer window, some people will say that business is starting to look a bit better, you know, players like, delete, delete, do that, so these are actually, I think those people say it's a TV on how those transfers are looking, maybe two or three years time, I don't think they're an incredible business by any stretch of imagination, but equally they're not kind of anti-cassamero kind of levels of excess of weight, so so that's the author of it, right, you're trashing everything that's gone before, but there's been some mistakes, sort of what she's conceded by the way, it's not like you sat there saying, you know, we've got everything right, but also have to make any more mistakes, any number in, for example, to be a success. You're talking about the Ashworth thing, I thought it was fantastic about exactly how Ashworth ended up leaving, and the decision-making team that did this, I thought that that got into the way that the decision-making team for the football side was, it's very unclear who's in charge, you've got Barata, the new CEO, you've got Sir Jim, you had Ashworth running football operations, and what they're wondering is, is they're taking all these business decisions, is there a similar kind of question of who's making the decisions as there is on the football side? I think that's a fair point, I think clearly there are, there are some, I'll call it completely hospitals that are wandering around all traffic quite a lot, and, you know, so to begin, they would say, well they came in, the whole thing was, we're going to hire Best in Class, right, Best in Class, and what we do, you know, I think there's an argument that the CEO, Omar Barata is hired for Manchester City, where he's CEO, where's the Barcelona's sponsorship, he's kind of hybrid, he seems kind of hybrid, or frayed himself as this hybrid football commercial, kind of guy, I'm sure entirely what football, you know, of that necessarily, I know it was involved in doing the holiday when I said he signed in, but, you know, also know why they've not said he signed hard on it, because they've got a lot of money, and because people are always there, and that's one of the best teams in Europe, right, but, you know, you're not selling, you're not selling a pen, right, to a, to someone there. So, I'm going to be slightly wary of that from, you know, you've got this kind of 360 CEO that can do this, can do this, can do that, say, in one day, in one day, in the next day, knowing you've been hammering the best coach in Europe the next day.
Now, if you take that a bit further, what they've also got now is the cheap financial officer, Roger Barata's a forming loss employee, they also have this guy, Gary Hemingway, who is a data, who's working with his special projects and infrastructure, and he also is now involved in the staging side of things, but also working on data analytics, right, so, it's not the absolute best person to be working on both of those things, I'm just denying to maybe, you know, I've not worked with this guy, but I think that has raised certain questions, and then you also have Sir Dave Railford at the very top, kind of, as this kind of, oh, it's very difficult to work out, I mean, this is without portfolio, right, who is having certain saves over performance, and I know he's working on things like, you know, when they first go in the building, he's spending a lot of time on training kit designs, and not kit designs, and, you know, whether it was something like the aerodynamics of a kit that could make things better for the players. So, kind of classic, Railford marginal games, kind of stuff, but also was involved last summer when I was able to sort of find out how you were interviewing managers before that next time had. So, I think that has been an element over the past year of some people with any nice thinking, hang on, you know, these guys sort of Richard Arnold, they're looking at you guys, you measure up your friends and they didn't know anything about football. What do these guys necessarily know about that?
Now, I think anyone else will say, you know, they've now got people in the building, right, that their structure is now fairly set up. They've now got a new G business officer Mark Armstrong from PSG. Again, you know, what a question about that is, the kind of operations they're basically pursuing, you know, are very different, doing commercial PSG over the past few years. But, you know, Baral is there, you've got what's going on Mark Armstrong, Jason Wilcox now, technical director of CRISP without doing the crewman, we're going to build out the data department.
So, it should start to look like less cooks, you know, in there. But it's also a question of, you know, Cam Jim, let his management team go on with it and can also, you know, what Baral also continues to be his presence, is a lot of performance on social media, sort of being around the place as well. You know, two of us in the United's medical production was just, should be reported there leaving as well. So, I think that's an interesting thing, I think they're going to be right.
So, they're clean up, clean up dirt, right, if they're going to be right then, as well, I think it's interesting that they are choosing to leave, and choosing to leave Manchester United to go to Brazil as well. I'm not sure what that says about the environment that unites the environment. I did want to ask you, before we let you go, and I understand you may just literally not be able to answer this. You've done a lot of reporting over at Manchester United, about Manchester United, over the past few years.
And I would say that Manchester United is an institution that is both famous for not being a particularly tight ship, but also famous for being quite quirky in terms of who they will talk to and how. So, I am a little bit curious to sort of what the process for you was like walking down the road of being incredibly informed about this giant club. It's a difficult question for somebody in our business to answer, I understand. Yeah, if you work on the premise that journalists will never talk in depth about where information is coming from, what I would say is that on the whole, I find Manchester United pretty good to do as information to them, on the whole with their coaches pretty fair, in terms of, yeah, look, fortunately, I think you get to a place as a journalist, and also as a publication, it's not just myself, when you've got, when you're working with horses like David Orson, he went well, and Andy Misson, all of whom have the trust, I think, of a lot of Manchester United supporters and football sports in general.
And therefore, people know that when the information is being reported, what it's being reported with a face, but it's also true. I think that's an institution to a place where they probably have to engage, right, where they can't just, you know, there's, I think football clubs in general can move past the point of, you know, maybe where it was 15 years ago, when Ferguson was there, where they just said, you can go, you can't do that anymore, right, it just doesn't work like that. So, you know, they have to engage, let there be moments where, you know, the club, in particular, we did some reports, and I understand why they did this at a time, it's quite boring, but, you know, the process we go through is, if we have information, your coach and institution, you say you're attempting to report it, you're offering them a deadline to respond, which is both because you intend to report, but also because you want to be fair and accurate and balanced and you want to reflect anything within reason, that they, which to be included in the reports, it doesn't right to reply. Now, at the time, the United States, we've got a huge, huge amount of pressure at that time, a huge asset to them, was kind of on the brink, and a lot, executive reputations were at least, you know, kind of timed their responses, but also putting out a whole public statement, and that's a very unusual step in the club to take.
That's also been an exception, right, it's not the way that they've worked in general. I also kind of understand, I also don't think I've just said a bad thing for us, right, because when it sold me, they were worried. There was a whole bunch of stress and effect around that response from them, for sure. It sold me the word, it sold me, it further solidified to me the kind of fundamental truth that was in our reporting.
So, yeah, I mean, it's not really, it's never really been a kind of a professional issue, you know, yeah, there's times where, and not just when I'm just the United States, where it comes from people at all different organisations, you'll have a discussion, right, and sometimes that discussion can be pretty easy, but that to me is a communication person doing their job for the people they work for, you know, actually the interests of their organisation, those that pay to do, and me arguing in defence and information would happen. With most people at the end of the day, you can, you know, you're seeing that you're having a drink together, right, because the reality is, that's just two people doing their job in a way that it's rarely an unusual interest. And what you hope to come to is a point where they see it and think, you know, we don't really know how this will not be published, but what has been published is true and as fair as possible. I think my United States have also been helped over the last year or so by the fact that they've finally had us first.
You know, they have, whether people like what they're saying or not, I've only met him once, so I think he's having a round table, which let's just have to take him over in the club, but he really does answer it. That's true, that's true. Right, and, you know, there's no, I have nothing, you know, I don't have to, I don't have to, I don't have to, I'm not talking to him, but when you look across the ownership of sports teams in the UK, that is really an exception. You know, it just doesn't really happen across the country.
Now, maybe after the past week, that makes me quite, you know, very, very often. But, you know, he needs to be prepared to do that. He's clearly someone who kind of wants to be looked at it, I think in some ways, or at least wants people to understand why he's doing stuff. And I think also, by the way, I don't think it's just a case about patent engagement, I think it is also, that they have the stated project that they need some public money for.
So, but for the projects around the stadium, and therefore, I think he has to be a bit more transparent, a bit more visible, as a result of that process. So, yeah, I'd like to see other people, you know, like, they're down at the bar, they're Chelsea doing more stuff like that, or the Broncos are Arsenal, or F.S.G. at Liverpool, and, you know, you've got a top link on the media, so that's right. I think all of these fan bases were like, whether they are the real or not.
So, here, more from the people who are wearing their clothes. Because, you know, you do come away from that process these last week, with a better understanding of what they're trying to do. You know, whether you agree with it or not. So, you know, yes, club belongs to fans, but they agree with something everyone says.
And therefore, at least gives you an idea of the direction that they take. Yeah, one thing that's always struck us, like, you know, obviously it's coming from American sports. The perspective is that GM's general managers and American sports, the people above the coach and manager, they do regular press conferences. Like, the owners often don't.
The owners are often still shielded from this, but there are executives that are talking to the media in a way that, like, otherwise, you get what you have in the Premier League and most of your football, where coaches are getting asked about decisions that are simply not in their purview. Right, so, like, the most classical one of that was, you know, when the whole Chelsea crisis was taking place, you had some of the two being asked questions about, where we were going to get some kind of sanctions on the show. And so, we thought, I mean, answered those questions very well, but it was completely ridiculous. As a situation, right, that he's having to do that.
Flipside is these guys are paid better than pretty much anyone. And therefore, you know, the often comes from a question, okay. Yeah, that's about informing the fans and informing people are interested. Right.
So, you know, at the moment, you know, just to bring it kind of more America, and you know, you've got this conflict half tournament taking place this week, which is, I don't think the tournament itself is political, but the country is competing in it. U.S., Canada, Mexico, and Panama. Adam, from a media nerd perspective, I can't tell you how many meetings I have sat in over the last week about how to cover it, what the bounds of covering it are. How should we talk about it?
These guys are going to be asked questions. What kinds of things are and aren't loose? Just like, you know, difficult questions. And at the same time, you have, you know, Porcino definitely has been asked this week, and he's kind of saying things like, you know, I'm standing in person, we can win the World Cup, and it's kind of pretty soft.
But Porcino has explicitly said, it's a mistake. So much like, I, again, I sort of sympathize with him being put in the position, right? Right. Right.
But at the point I was going to make is actually, like, maybe someone above in the U.S. of it could be around state of Russia. Yes. Equally, what are they going to say?
They're also true. There's this current member in kind of U.S. politics and U.S. situation where you have, you know, how great can U.S.
soccer be when the owners of, you know, Amazon, and Apple, and Google, and Fedder and Netter are having to be as, or choosing to be, you know, as, as, as compliant as they are. So what powers U.S. soccer? I mean, either the AFL, probably, is very kind of anxious at the moment.
So I have some sympathy with, with a lot of people involved there at the moment, but it's interesting just to go off that tangent slide. So I was talking to Arturo Somcan, who was the former Mexican ambassador to the United States, and he was there in 2010, 2013. He was saying, you know, his original pitch to Obama about the joint U.S.-Mexico World Cup was, we can have this statement to look, right? Shared prosperity, shared unity, North America as this joint force.
And now he's looking at being like, this is a complete opposite, right? Well, I envisaged him that we hoped it might be. Now, maybe everything gets better by a year's time, or maybe it's not, maybe it's not worse than kind of what's involved in that now as well. But I think it's clear that, you know, those head coaches and players are going to be asked some pretty tricky things, you know, over the next year and a half or so, that they're going to have to answer.
And I think that is going to raise certain questions. And even, you know, FIFA, I know a lot of people have been very critical. I mean, myself, including the times of Gianni Martino, but FIFA also, you wonder what is the best strategy for that, right? If they're trying to get stuff out of the Trump administration over the next year and a bit, you know, one of the major concerns of visa and security funding, both of which will be federal school, yes, you know, you could say, well, in fact, he doesn't give any money to the other office, he doesn't trust that.
Okay. But flip side is he needs, they need them. And just in fact, he don't need to be doing like 15 posts a week saying, how fantastic Trump is. I'm not sure.
But equally, I think those who appear to have success with the administration, here's a classic. And that's a very uncomfortable thing for a lot of people to accept. You know, to be clear, I'm not sort of kidding. What I think is right or wrong there, I'm just saying strategically, you can understand certain things that are happening at the moment.
And I don't think they're going to become any less complex, just because of the unpredictability of the administration. Is that what you guys think? No, I think you were raising the point, which is in effect strategically, FIFA finds itself in the same place that they found themselves in with Qatar and with Russia in a lot of ways, unexpectedly. And those difficult balances and trade-offs were put forth as reasons why you should not be having World Cups necessarily in Qatar and Russia.
But now all of a sudden, you're having those similar difficulties with the United States and having to negotiate the process is unavoidable. And that's even before you get, you know, as you were talking, I was thinking about like, you know, this is a major event. There are structural and just sort of practical considerations of making this come off, that come through the federal government, that come through, you know, visas not just for players, but for facilitating fan travel, like all of this stuff, right? And I suspect we're going to want to have you back on as the World Cup gets closer to talk.
No, no, no, no. There are huge, huge, huge challenges at the moment with visas over the hands. First of all, you've got the Central House, right? So that keeps talking about World Cup, keeps talking about how people all the World Cup have been.
At the same time, you have an administration's agenda that is very open about that. They don't want lots of people coming to the country. Now, obviously there's a big difference between people coming to tourists as small fans, but there is also a reality that there will be people who will be trying to come from places in the world, that whereby consular officials will be sceptical, that even if someone has bought a ticket or has a ticket for a fan fest, much cheaper, that they don't have until you notice it. And I think in the current climate, consular officials are even more vigilant, so the potential embarrassment, right?
I'm not going on Twitter and saying, we've let in four guys from ex-country, they have a fan fest ticket, how do these guys not do better checks? And often these consular official interviews are like a couple of minutes, right? Not often, always. I mean, I happen to be married to somebody who's spent two years before doing that.
No, they're just, non-immigrant interviews are fast and they are subject to judgment. And you are on the side of caution, you surely. If there's any risk. And, you know, some of this is legitimate in the sense of, you know, so Russia and Qatar is basically, if you've got a ticket, right?
Because they weren't that worried about people trying to stay in the country because the presumption to be frank is not that many people are trying to go and live in Qatar, right, from all over the world, whereas the US, for now, it is still a place that people want refugees, that people are looking for, you know, the American dream and all that kind of stuff. And one of the things that's going to be a big challenge is the wait times, a lot of the consulars are not good, right? So Colombia, I think it's 600-700 days. You've missed the look up.
You don't really have a visa. You've not missed the look up. What's like Brazilian Argentina? There have been very many people down over the last couple of years, but if the spending is reduced in any way in this area, which is something that a lot of people will say in part in fear, those wait times will go from, what, currently 30-40 days back up to a few hundred days.
Now, in some ways, does that matter? Some people will say, well, there's enough people within their equitable buy tickets for these games. So you're going to set up stadiums, there's enough kind of Latino people, for example, within the country to set up games involving their teams. In any case, and there's enough people on what you call S sub-countures, or S sub-visas that would be able to set up tickets.
And enough people can already have visas, right? But don't need to apply for a new one. And maybe people will reason. Well, they're the people with money anywhere, right?
And then people will come. But what people really want is the solidarity open to everyone, right? A party in the world. And it's also what the US travel industry wants.
And it's what hotels want, and it's what fan zones want, and it's what cities want, when they can visit tens of millions often of taxpayer dollars. It's investing in the same. So we've got a lot more here for Manchester City businesses. Well, that's what this podcast is.
And I appreciate this way of thinking about it because I think that, sort of, I think about the Qatar and Russia World Cups and how with those people coming to the country, it was certainly very, very important to Qatar that they were trying to market. This is what people call it. Marketing, sports, watching, whatever you want to call it. It's very important that people go to the country that have a good time and leave and tell people they had a good time.
And so... Right, but let me give you a perfect example of that. So, Qatar, for example, if you had a ticket, you could use Metro. Right?
It was through. In the US, people wanted that. In the US, right? They want that for all of us now.
You know, if someone's coming with any basically subsidised food travel. The city's looking for that. I'm being like, are you insane? Right?
Right? Right? And also, just from a kind of taxpayer dollar state level, excuse me, could you? Well, I should always do wealthy enough to have tickets for World Cups and vinyl be able to get a truck transient from New York Port Authority to Metlife Stadium for no money at all.
All the homes that's about as well as, I don't know, Janice aged 45, single number two, going to work, is paying for Christ. Right? That there is an absolutely fair, protecting local taxpayer dollars, arguing about it. But very, very different to the way that people have been able to work in these years.
So, this has been a complicated corner for people to organise, not just because of the federal government. So, by the way, it was strictly a little bit with the Biden administration. Just to get it, you know, just to get it up to the agenda, right? Because someone says to me, they're like, people who know to stop when the NFL asks.
Right? You know, they listen when the NFL wants something. So, FIFA is down that list. And the US also doesn't have a sports ministry, for example.
So, a lot of this stuff would go into like the National Security Council, for example. Well, at the moment, you've got Russia, Ukraine, you've got Israel, you've got Hamas, you've got Palestine, you've got Canada, all of a sudden. You've got Canada, you've got Greenland, you've got Panama, you've got Mexico, you've got somewhere. Well, 12th, 13th item, maybe you can get some money for FIFA.
Right? So, I know the White House has set up this task force that we'll kind of liaise between all of this. So, that's at this kind of a battle level. But then you've got a lot of local stakeholders in a way that just wasn't the challenge you had, so you've got such a centralised decision-making process.
So, on a city level, you have mayors who have governors, you have local team owners that have a big sale of stadium owners. You have local transit, all of these different bodies, some of which will be public answers, some of which will be public partnerships, some of which will be private. And you've got to get all these people aligned and agreed. And that's where, I think, it's been a huge time for FIFA.
And it's also goes up to the US. It's a kind of truth that we're working with, right, for these organisations, whether it's World Cup or the Olympics. Because actually, you get to a point where the World Cup is not so big, probably it is. It may go 64 based on these proposals.
There's only so many countries in the world that can even host something about this table. You know, they'll have the infrastructure in place, they won't have one out of them saving. So, obviously, we just go on rotation. You know, because we have three or four countries in the future out there.
The US and polling countries, maybe, can't be able to hear stuff, maybe trying to get back involved. And then, of course, we have Australia. But there's not that many places that can actually put on this sort of anymore. So, the US needs to kind of show us a FIFA, although FIFA needs to show as well.
The US kind of way of working to have, I think, something that's true. Even though, yeah, they would always say, you know, we can just hold this down tomorrow. There you go. We will definitely have you back on to devote even more time to this.
I'm sure there will be, especially as it gets closer, a never-ending stream of stories that take comments. I am both looking forward to you and dreading it in sort of my editorial capacity. All right, thank you very much, Adam, for coming on. Thank you so much.
Pleasure. And yeah, we'll talk to you soon. Thank you all for listening and wanted to mention, since we talked about a number of other United Podcasts, you can get those at patreon.com slash double pivot. We talked to the double pivot's financial shenanigans correspond.
It's gone to Amunov about United's books and sort of did a financial dive on that. And we also talked to the double pivot's new cycling and cryptocurrency correspondent Ben Walsh about Ineos and about cycling. And he explained to me the sport of cycling to give us context for what Jim Radcliffe, Dave's braille for the rest of these folks are doing at Manchester United and what it all means. So, again, you can check that out.
Thanks again to Adam for joining us. Obviously, he's working at the athletic. I mean, I don't think that's something that needs to be said, but nonetheless, here we are. And we'll back with more podcasts soon.
Cheers, y'all.