One Of The Best Manchester United Goal!

Kagawa squares the ball to Rooney.

Rooney in his own half sees Van Persie making the run.

A Hail Mary pass was lobbed towards the path of Van Persie's run.

The pass was right on the money. Van Persie didn't even need to break his run. All was needed was concentration. Eyes on the ball, mate.

Bang!

Bang Bang Van Persie lets fly.

Van Persie didn't even need the ball to bounce. He lashes the ball and kaboom!

Ball was in the net!

What a volley! What a goal!


One of the best Manchester United ever!

Absolutely brilliant!

This is the goal of the season for me!

Well done United!

Champions again!

Man United Exits Champions League 2013.

It's a shame how Man United lost to Real Madrid.

It's a shame because it has been a LONG time since Man United played 'well' in the Champions League.

I felt United were clearly the better team in both legs and with a little bit more luck, United should have another 3 goals at least.

But that's how it is.

It's a football match and sometimes the better team doesn't win.

Them conspiracy theorist would probably chalk this off as United losing because of the referee. Despite me despising that red card decision on Nani's high kick, after cooling off from the initial outrage, I thought about it. Nani's leg did caught Arebola and a high kick is a high kick. It was dangerous because Arebola decided to challenge bravely.

I was outraged by the decision when I was watching the match. I felt Nani was playing the ball and he did not even know where Arebola was and more so, I thought Arebola barged into Nani. And to make matters worse, not one of the Madrid players were expecting neither were they calling for a red card.

The ref, however did flash the red for that high kick.

I guess a high kick is a high kick.

END of.

It's a shame.

Kudos to Mourinho for instantly reacting to the decision instantly by bringing off Arebola and sending in Luka Modric. It was a bold decision by a coach who saw this incident as an opportunity to attack, whereas Sir Alex decided to hold on and not make any changes. It was an understandable decision from Sir Alex. United was really in control and were leading 1-0 before the sending off and Madrid wasn't playing that well then. I did not even recall De Gea having to make a save during the first hlaf.

That was where the match was won and lost.

Modric, later, smashed in an unstoppable equaliser and Ronaldo followed up with a brilliant winner.

Hats off to Ronaldo.

He has improved as a player since joining Madrid and at this moment of time, he's simply unplayable. A gladiator.

Feature Article: Making A Killing On Manchester United

Source: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/sports/nationworld/sns-rt-us-manchesterunited-ipobre871081-20120801,0,1408065.story

• Analysis: Glazers may make a killing on Man Utd investment 1:09 a.m. EDT, August 2, 2012
  
  (Reuters) - Manchester United Ltd's owners stand to make about three times their investment in the British soccer club if it successfully goes public.
  
  The club, one of the most popular in the world, has kicked off the marketing for its U.S. initial public offering, which will value the club at $3.3 billion if the sale is at the high end of the pricing range of $16-to-$20 per share.
  
  The owners, the Glazer family, bought the team for 790 million pounds ($1.2 billion) in 2005 in a leveraged buyout. In terms of equity, the Florida-based family, whose other interests include shopping centers and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers football team, has invested at least 521.1 million pounds ($813.7 million) in Manchester United.
  
  Through the IPO, they will initially get up to $167 million from their sale of 8.3 million shares. They will also still own 89.8 percent of the shares, which will be worth nearly $3 billion at a $20 a share price. The Glazers have already received a 10 million pound dividend, which was used to pay back money they borrowed from the club in 2008.
  
  The huge profit for the family could make Manchester United the latest poster child for potential problems faced by companies that become targets of leveraged buyouts. To critics, such deals load companies with debt to supercharge the owners' profits, while sometimes leaving the companies worse off than they were before.
  
  The risk may be greater for a sports team, where finances can turn on how well the team does on the field, which can depend on a club having enough money to buy and pay top players.
  
  Poor performance can quickly feed through to lower revenue from ticket sales and TV rights, and eventually hurt commercial revenue from sponsorships and sales of merchandise, such as team shirts.
  
  Manchester United, which was debt-free before the Glazers bought it, had 437 million pounds ($682 million) of debt as of June 30.
  
  Fans of the 134-year-old team have long reviled the Glazers, worrying that reduced financial flexibility because of the debt would come at the expense of investment in players and the team's performance.
  
  Their dissatisfaction with the Glazers has only grown after the team, English champions a record 19 times, failed to win a trophy last season for the first time since 2005.
  
  Manchester United Supporters Trust, a group of almost 180,000 fans, plans a mass mail campaign against the IPO.
  
  "From the Manchester United Supporters' Trust point of view, we want to send a message to U.S. banks that this IPO is very unpopular, and they should not underwrite it," said Sean Bones, 52, a member of the group who describes himself as a life-long fan of the club.
  
  "We see the Glazers as using the club as a cash cow, and this IPO is milking time," Bones said.
  
  A Manchester United spokeswoman declined to comment for this article or on the Glazers' behalf. The Glazers could not be reached through the Buccaneers either.
  
  GREAT EXPECTATIONS
  
  There is no guarantee that the Glazers will be able to reap a big return. Manchester United is betting that it will be able to command an exceptionally high valuation, but investors and bankers said achieving that number could be a reach.
  
  At an IPO price of $20 per share, Manchester United's enterprise value would be 8 times revenue, rivaling one of the richest sports deals in recent years.
  
  Earlier this year, a group spearheaded by former basketball great Earvin "Magic" Johnson paid 8.3 times revenue to buy the U.S. baseball team, the Los Angeles Dodgers, according to a source familiar with the situation. The $2 billion price for that deal marked the largest sum ever spent for a major league U.S. sport franchise.
  
  Looked at another way, Manchester United will be valued at around 26 times its adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) in the 12 months through June 30.
  
  Traditional media companies, which the company's bankers are trying to pit it against, trade at much lower multiples. Walt Disney Co, for example, trades at around 10 times its trailing 12-month EBITDA, according to Thomson Reuters data. The Madison Square Garden Co, which owns the New York Knicks basketball team and the Rangers hockey team, trades at roughly 11 times its trailing 12-month EBITDA.
  
  "Manchester United is probably the crown jewel of sports franchises, but even it shouldn't get the valuation it's seeking here," said Josef Schuster, who helps manage $2.5 billion for Chicago-based financial services firm IPOX Schuster.
  
  The owner's valuation expectation was one reason why Morgan Stanley dropped out of the underwriting syndicate, sources familiar with the situation told Reuters last month.
  
  WEAKENED FINANCES
  
  The company's latest financials, disclosed in an amended U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Monday, also paint a picture of a club with money problems.
  
  By June 30, 2010, the Glazers had seen their equity in the club wiped out as losses piled up over the years, and injected 249.1 million pounds in November that year to pay down expensive debt.
  
  While the club projects its profit for the fiscal year ended June 30 will climb 62 percent to 77 percent, this was the result of a tax credit, without which it would have posted a loss.
  
  Moreover, its revenues are volatile and depend on how well the team does.
  
  Broadcast revenue, which accounts for about a third of the club's overall revenue, comes from contracts with the Premier League and Champions League, and payments depend on the number of matches for broadcast. Similarly, the team's match day revenue, which also accounts for a third of overall revenue, depends on the number of games it plays.
  
  In the fiscal year ended June 30, Manchester United's match day revenue is expected to fall 11 percent to 12 percent because the team played four home games less in the most recent season when compared with the previous one. Broadcast revenue is seen down 11 percent to 13 percent.
  
  To be sure, it is not all doom and gloom for the club. A seven-year club jersey sponsorship deal with General Motors Co, starting in 2014, will be a consistent source of revenue for the team. The deal is worth roughly $600 million.
  
  In Manchester United's roadshow, which has been posted on the internet, executives argue that the team is in the early stages of making more money off the strength of its brand around the globe. Emerging markets in particular comprise a valuable commercial opportunity for the franchise, the team's management says.
  
  "It's a global media company that participates in the most watched sport in the world. Investors don't have easy access to a company like that," said Michael Obuchowski, a portfolio manager with North Shore Asset Management in Cold Spring Harbor, New York.
  
  Still, investors face a lot of risks.
  
  Potential investors are "buying equity in something that is already heavily leveraged and doesn't have a sustainable profit," said Bob Boland, a professor of sports management at New York University. "This is like buying a piece of land with a mortgage already on it."
  
  (Reporting By Olivia Oran in New York; Additional reporting by Keith Weir in London; Editing by Paritosh Bansal, Martin Howell and Leslie Gevirtz)

Manchester United's IPO Comes Under Fire

On IrishTimes.com: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/sport/2012/0711/1224319790474.html

• United's float figures don't add up for some
  
  DAVID CONN
  
  THE GLAZER family’s timing for floating Manchester United is facing criticism from some analysts who argue the Glazers are deliberately avoiding having to present United’s expected decline in financial performance in 2011-12.
  
  The Glazers have filed with the New York Stock Exchange, to float a Manchester United company registered in the Cayman Islands tax haven, United’s financial accounts for the year before that, to June 30th, 2011.
  
  United’s income is expected to have suffered a significant decline last year, principally due to Alex Ferguson’s team being eliminated from the Champions League at the group stage, whereas in 2011 they earned €53m from Uefa after reaching the final.
  
  Presenting accounts more than 12 months old fails to comply with US Securities and Exchange Commission requirements, and United have had to apply for special dispensation to have the out-of date accounts allowed.
  
  In a letter dated July 3rd, Edward Woodward, United’s executive vice-chairman based in London, points out the accounts for United’s most recent financial year, to June 30th 2012, are not overdue in the Cayman Islands – “its jurisdiction of incorporation” – or any other country. Having to present the 2011-12 accounts, Woodward claims in the letter, would be: “impractical and involve undue hardship” for United.
  
  United spokesmen both at their Old Trafford offices and representing the Cayman Islands-registered company in New York are not commenting on the proposed flotation until it is complete and declined to explain why the Glazers had chosen this timing for the float, and to deliver out-of-date accounts.
  
  Owen Wild, deputy editor of International Finance Review, has criticised the timing, suggesting it is because United’s financial performance in 2011-12 is likely to have been significantly worse than for 2010-11.
  
  “It is very often unnecessary to do this, and investors are rightly suspicious when companies do it,” Wild said. “We have several times seen companies file out-of-date accounts, then when the more recent accounts come out, they show a decline in financial performance.”
  
  United’s 2011-12 accounts are almost certain to show the club made less money than in 2010-11. That year, Ferguson’s team won the Premier League and lost in the Champions League final at Wembley, to Barcelona.
  
  With full houses at Old Trafford regular and the team’s success marketed for global sponsorships by a team Woodward oversees in the London office, United posted a record income of €420m in 2010-11.
  
  Despite paying interest and other finance costs of €67m on the debts, then standing at €580m, which the Glazers loaded on to United to buy the club, United returned a €15m profit in 2010-11.
  
  The club’s income from European competitions will be significantly reduced for the most recent season, when United were dismissed from the Europa League by Athletic Bilbao after their Champions League failure. Uefa are due to release figures on Friday for how much each club was paid for Champions and Europa League participation last season. United’s payment can be expected to be around half that of the previous year.
  
  Many United fans feel that last season was the one in which the debts loaded on to the club by the Glazers, now at €535m, finally started to bite into the performance of Ferguson’s team.

On NY Times: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/07/10/in-manchester-uniteds-i-p-o-a-preference-for-u-s-rules/

• Manchester United, the English soccer team with an adoring fan base in Europe and Asia, is filing to go public in the United States.
  
  But the initial public offering is not a reflection of Americans’ increasing love of soccer. Instead, it is a reflection of American regulators’ light touch.
  
  I’m not kidding. The United States, which has long been criticized for its harsh rules surrounding I.P.O.’s, is now the place where foreign companies go to avoid regulation.
  
  Manchester United may be the world’s most popular soccer club, with 659 million fans according to the team’s own estimates. In 2005, the American businessman Malcolm Glazer and his family bought control of the team, loading it up with hundreds of millions of dollars in debt. Now, the company is selling shares to raise money and reduce its debt, which stands at about $655 million.
  
  But the Glazers do not want to give up voting control since, among other reasons, Manchester United fans appear eager to buy back the team from the still-unpopular family. In 2010, a prominent group of Manchester United fans were said to have tried to form a consortium to repurchase the club. The Glazers have uniformly given the same response: the team is not for sale. Now, the Glazers are venue-shopping for their stock.
  
  They passed over the Hong Kong Stock Exchange because it would not give the team a waiver to allow two classes of shares, with different voting rights. The London Stock Exchange also does not allow such share structures, perhaps the reason this natural home was skipped over by the Glazers.
  
  Manchester United declined to comment for this article.
  
  The Singapore Exchange seemed more amenable to the Glazers’ plan to list Manchester United and keep control through a dual-class structure. But after the exchange delayed final signoff on the dual-class shares and the Asian markets cooled, the Singapore plans were derailed, according to an article in Reuters.
  
  The soccer team has recently found a home for its stock in the United States. Manchester United filed the papers this month for its initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange, and the Glazers are taking advantage of the country’s willingness to be more flexible when it comes to shareholder rights. Manchester United is proposing a corporate structure that would give the Glazers shares with 10 votes apiece. Public investors would receive one vote for each share.
  
  While the Securities and Exchange Commission tried to ban this type of dual-class voting stock in the 1980s, a federal appeals court struck down the rules. Since then, the structure has become increasingly common. Facebook, LinkedIn and Google all have dual-class shares. The New York Times also has a dual-class voting structure. In 2011, 28 offerings featured dual-class structures that gave greater voting rights to certain shareholders, according to the research firm Dealogic.
  
  The Manchester United offering is a case study in how the American markets have evolved toward deregulation in the past decade.
  The company is a beneficiary of the newly enacted Jumpstart Our Business Start-Ups Act, known as the JOBS Act, designed to help private companies raise capital and go public. Although the team was founded in 1878, the JOBS Act classifies Manchester United as an emerging growth company since it has less than $1 billion in revenue. As such, the company, which is incorporated in the Cayman Islands, does not face the same hurdles as American businesses.
  
  The JOBS Act builds on earlier efforts by the S.E.C. to loosen the rules governing I.P.O.’s of foreign companies. Under pressure from stock exchanges and other market players, the agency has exempted foreign issuers like Manchester United from large parts of American securities laws.
  
  Manchester United will not need to file quarterly reports, report material events, file proxy statements or disclose extensive compensation information, all of which American companies must do. Under a different S.E.C. rule adopted in 2008, Manchester United also does not need to report financials under the generally accepted accounting principles used in the United States, but can instead rely on international financial reporting standards.
  
  Because Manchester United will be a controlled company, it does not need to follow the New York Stock Exchange rules adopted in 2003 that require a public company to have a board composed mainly of independent directors. The board of Manchester United will have four directors, two of Malcolm Glazer’s sons and two executives of the company.
  
  The legal environment, which investment bankers and lawyers have long argued deterred I.P.O.’s, also appears to be more conducive. This may be because securities litigation reforms put in place by Congress and the Supreme Court have meant fewer cases in recent years. Even after the financial crisis, only 16 companies on the Standard & Poor’s 500 were subject to this type of litigation in 2011, the lowest number since 2000, according to the Stanford Securities Class Action Clearinghouse.
  
  It’s all a bit unsettling.
  
  After the enactment of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2001, critics claimed that the new regulation was driving away foreign companies, although at least one academic study rebutted this claim. But as regulators have slowly loosened the rules, the American markets are attracting foreign issuers seeking watered-down rules.
  
  This does not mean that this deregulation is wrongheaded.
  
  The JOBS Act and other initiatives may not have been designed to attract the likes of Manchester United, but such I.P.O.’s do provide work for investment bankers, lawyers and the exchanges. They also build up American prestige by bringing well-known foreign companies to the United States.
  
  At the same time, the deregulation effort means lower compliance costs for businesses. Presumably, that extra money can be invested, bolstering the economy.
  
  The question is whether deregulation is worth the price.
  
  I have little sympathy for investors who buy Manchester United shares. The risks are mainly disclosed.
  
  The bigger question is whether lowering the bar for foreign issuers will come back to haunt the American markets.
  
  Even before the JOBS Act, Chinese companies took advantage of new S.E.C. rules and started going public en masse in the United States. While some of the I.P.O.’s have worked out, there are now more than 100 newly public Chinese companies facing accusations of fraud by either investors or regulators.
  
  The risk is that American exchanges will become more like London’s Alternative Investment Market, a lightly regulated stock exchange that has fostered some spectacular flops. If so, investors may lose faith in American markets, and the United States may end up sacrificing long-term stature for short-term gain.
  
  Either way, the next time someone calls the American markets overregulated, you might want to point them to the Manchester United I.P.O. — and remind them that the English soccer club came to the United States to avoid more burdensome foreign rules.
  

Yes, I won't be an investor.