A new book on prospective Manchester United owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe has revealed how the English businessman tried to invest in Barcelona before switching his focus to the Red Devils.
Ratcliffe currently finds himself battling Sheikh Jassim in the battle to buy United from the Glazer family, but 90min understands that the Qatari group are growing in confidence that they will ultimately win the race.
It has now been revealed by The Times that Ratcliffe, the head of the INEOS group trying to buy United, actually pursued a lucrative investment at Barcelona following the return of president Joan Laporta.
"We had an extremely interesting conversation," the book reads, explaining that Ratcliffe urged Laporta not to sell off the club's assets - the famous 'levers' - and instead accept significant investment from him.
"We told them, “Don’t do it, guys - we'll put in two or three billion, renovate the Nou Camp and have 50 per cent ownership - and sign a deed to say we’d never sell," the passage continues. "Our interest was in football alone, not making money. I think it would have worked well.
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"We talked about it but, in the end, they didn't think they could go to the fans with it. The road they are going down is a disaster. We tried to point that out and they said, 'We know, but...' They are all short-termers [Barcelona regimes] because the president comes in, does it for five years and hands the mess over to someone else.
"They have now sold a chunk of the TV rights, and merchandising rights, for the next 25 years. They've sold them to American hedge funds. So they’ve got this big slug of cash, which they can now... waste.
"But if you looked at top football clubs - Real Madrid, Barcelona, Manchester United, Manchester City and so on - they had roughly similar budgets: say £800m for the sake of argument. Because of what Barcelona had done, theirs would be more like £500m.
"That's why we told them not to do it. But they said no, and now we've got that out of our system, we can concentrate on Nice."
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This article was originally published on 90min as How Sir Jim Ratcliffe tried to buy Barcelona before Man Utd.