Sir Jim Ratcliffe sends Sheikh Jassim fresh Man United takeover claim – ‘sell it to Qataris’

Sir Jim Ratcliffe and Ineos won the race to invest in Manchester United ahead of Sheikh Jassim and the Nine Two Foundation

Sir Jim Ratcliffe has jokingly acknowledged that he would sell the minority stake Ineos own in Manchester United “to the Qataris or something” if he did not believe they could sort the club out.

Sheikh Jassim, the chairman of Qatar Islamic Bank (QIB), notably bid to buy United the same year Ratcliffe‘s Ineos became minority owners. However, the son of former Prime Minister of Qatar Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber bin Mohammed bin Thani Al Thani withdrew his bid from the process after months of negotiations.

Ratcliffe has now, albeit candidly, suggested he would sell “to the Qataris”. However, he prefaced that by saying it would only happen if his belief dissipated.

The comments came when joining Gary Neville on The Overlap. “Change requires some unpopular decisions,” Ratcliffe acknowledged. “And I have to accept I’m going to be unpopular. I don’t know how long I’ll be unpopular; maybe I’ll be unpopular for a long period of time, but I think it’s worth being unpopular to fight our way through the changes that are necessary to get Manchester United back to where it should be, and hopefully, the attitudes will change a bit if we come out the other side with a successful outcome.”

Ratcliffe continued: “I think, ultimately, we’ll come out of this difficult period, and we’ll find ourselves in a much sunnier place, I do. I mean, otherwise, I couldn’t deal with what I’m having to deal with at the moment because it’s not very nice when you go home to Manchester, and you’ve got people saying some quite unpleasant things; that’s not very nice; I don’t need that, really, to be honest, at my age.”

He then clarified: “[I’m doing this] because I really like Manchester, you know, Manchester United’s been my boyhood club, and I believe that we can sort it out; if I didn’t believe it, I wouldn’t do it, would I? I’d sell it to the Qataris or something… [but] I think we’ll get there with Manchester United.”