Manchester United’s pursuit of Gareth Bale shows corporate drive is behind their ambitious transfer strategy

Aiming high: But are United shopping for the wrong reasons?
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John Dillon7 January 2016

Gareth Bale is the right player for Manchester United. He’s the right player for any team. But it is hard to avoid the idea that he is wanted at Old Trafford for some of the wrong reasons.

This is now a club which seems desperate to sign a superstar – any superstar - for commercial reasons and to turbo-charge its global marketing brand, which is the most zealously exploited in all of football.

If it’s not Bale they want, its Neymar. If it’s not Neymar, it’s Cristiano Ronaldo, again. Regularly, it’s Harry Kane, too.

They’re all at it in the modern game, of course. Football in the 21st century often seems like a corporate sales industry, with some running about on grass attached.

Fair enough. Business is business.

Those steeped in the game’s old ways have to make big adjustments in how they perceive the sport in such an era if they are to understand what it is really all about.

The problem is one of balance and perception. And Real Madrid apart – they trademarked this idea - United seem so much more brazen about their wish to go Galactico-Grabbing than most of their rivals.

It can make for an unedifying spectacle, especially while the memory remains so potent of how the club generated so many of its own home-grown talents like Ryan Giggs, David Beckham, Paul Scholes and the Neville Brothers.

It also leaves United’s current transfer policy and dealings open to even more intense scrutiny than the rest of the elite clubs. That has hardly been a raging success in recent times, which surely leaves supporters and the rest of the game wondering exactly what kind of grand plan is at work at the club.

Of course, it would hardly upset the supporters if any among Bale, Neymar or Ronaldo actually turned up in a red shirt – and under Louis van Gaal, United certainly need an injection of stardust and inventiveness, which all of those players would bring.

There’s an argument to suggest, too, that no coach would worry about how they might fit into his tactical plan or his team set-up. They transcend all that and create their own playing agenda.

Ed Woodward, the executive vice-chairman, can hardly be criticised for the level of his ambition in pursuing such targets, either.

But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a point to be made about this change of emphasis, even if it is a complex argument to carry.

True enough, even that Class of 92 – Giggs, Scholes and the rest – has been turned into its own commercial brand. So there’s another example of the slick ways of the modern game.

This is an age, after all, when United’s kit manufacturers, Adidas, assumed the right just this week to comment disparagingly about their style of play.

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But then Old Trafford’s owners, the Glazer family, have been the most voracious – and inventive, it must be said – in milking every last cent from United’s name in dozens of sponsorship and marketing tie-ups across the globe. And this means that the scrutiny of the club – even when chasing great players – will always include more intensive study of the commercial imperatives at work than elsewhere.

Behind the scenes, the club doesn’t seem averse anymore to nodding commentators in the right direction about their intentions, which is a vast change from how things used to be for the most part under Sir Alex Ferguson.

This breeds headlines and it is a thoroughly modern approach, it should be noted.

True enough, too, it’s a little perverse for any journalists to complain about the fact that better lines of communication have been opened up. This is Catch 22.

But the whole landscape of the soccer industry has changed dramatically just in the last five years. So it’s hard to avoid sceptically seeking a corporate, PR spin motivation when such things take place in an organisation which was once - in the main - like Fort Knox in terms of secrets.

It might have helped if there hadn’t been such an apparently scatter-gun approach to buying players since Fergie left. But there has been vast outlay without, it seems, much of a comprehensive strategy at work. Even last summer’ s most promising signings, Anthony Martial and Memphis Depay, are having indifferent first seasons.

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United have one of the biggest global presences in the game and they are standard bearers for the Premier League. So it’s probably right that they want to show some swagger and land the biggest names.

United always bought big, anyway. Much of Ferguson’s success was propelled by repeatedly buying the best around.

But in the stands, United is still a different place from Real’s Bernabeu, even if a large part of the Old Trafford crowd is now made up of what are termed “football tourists.”

There remains that knowledge that Fergie’s big spending was carried out organically. That it was all part of the carefully considered building and re-building of great teams.

There also remains that lingering yearning for the emergence of the local boy made good, although the is an increasing rarity at most of the big outfits.

Every massive tells a fresh story about modern football. The magic names of the superstars make the game's corporate drive more dominant in every transfer window.

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