Sordid saga of Manchester United’s sale looks like a kind of football endgame

T he final deadline for bids to buy Manchester United passed on Friday night. Although in fairness, it feels barely more final than the first two deadlines that passed in February and March. Given the looseness with which the Glazers appear to regard deadlines, (“mufc bid proposal FINAL FINAL USE THIS.docx”) it is possible that when they finally take their leave of the club a lucrative career in column-writing awaits them.

And so to the latest and hopefully the last round of a protracted charade that has come to resemble a reality television show in which viewers are sadly unable to vote off any of the protagonists. Indeed for a club so keen to recast itself as a global media brand you only wonder whether a little television jeopardy might have enlivened the process. Sheikh Jassim, mysterious son of the former prime minister of Qatar, your fellow contestants have voted you into the Hideaway for the night. Oh, you’re already there. As you were, then.

For the two suitors, Sheikh Jassim and Sir Jim Ratcliffe, the moment of truth is almost at hand, a prospect that when you consider the amount of rumour, obfuscation, gossip and unsubstantiated braggadocio that has characterised the entire circus, is a prospect that should terrify both of them. For months, abetted by a handy menagerie of client journalists, the pair have been able to campaign and sell their vision in public while barely having to utter a word on the record or engage with fan groups.

Ratcliffe, for his part, has been keen to play up his ties with the north-west, a region so close to his heart he now lives in Monaco. His pitch, which involves “making Manchester United the number one club in the world again”, has unmistakable echoes of his pledge, when he took