Manchester Mystique (No Moz Content)

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Man U and Celtic to play in Seattle Tuedsday night!!

----

Manchester Mystique

By Les Carpenter
Seattle Times staff reporter

The money machine sweeps around the world ringing a cash register melody of pounds, francs, yen and dinars. Every day, new loot piles in from the satellites in the sky and the T-shirts on the racks, filling the vaults of the old stadium, until it seems this is no longer about soccer but rather the heavy smell of commerce.

Sport's wealthiest franchise rolls into Seattle on Tuesday to play a match that doesn't even count, and for its efforts, Manchester United will pick up a little less than $1 million. The bigger profits will come not from the scoreboard but rather from the lure of an untapped currency for the team — the American dollar.

It only fits. After all, no other sports franchise has been as adept at selling its name.

In the 11 years of England's Premier League, Man U has won eight league titles, has taken the FA Cup three times and the European Champions Cup once. It won all three in 1999, in an unprecedented feat called the treble. But the real victories have come afterward when the receipts are counted and the money stashed.

Australian media baron Rupert Murdoch once reportedly offered $1 billion to purchase United — an unheard-of figure even in today's fast-spending, George Steinbrenner-Mark Cuban-Paul Allen world of sports. And because of this offer, most believe the team to be worth at least the $1 billion he pledged.

A billion dollars? For a soccer team?

"Who really knows what it's worth?" says David Carter, an economist with the Sports Business Group in Los Angeles. "Let's just say it's a really good return on investment. It's luck and TV and prudent management."

Or as Peter Draper, the man in charge of marketing for Manchester United, says: "We have always showed good business style."

Which is remarkable given that just 16 years ago, the team was for sale at the cut-rate price of 10 million pounds (nearly $16 million in today's American dollars). A once-glorious franchise tucked on a flea-market shelf.

Then out of nowhere, a Scottish coach named Alex Ferguson came to save them. The moribund United rose mightily at just the moment English soccer was putting itself on satellite television for all the world to see.

In the sudden confluence of on-field flash and global saturation, Man U became the most glamorous team in the world. Now nothing escapes the great money arm of Manchester United. As the games beam farther and farther across the planet, finding new countries and new legions of fans, the merchandising soon follows with shirts by Nike, soft drinks by Pepsi, until this all seems like a summer blockbuster that never ends.

"They're so ruthless," says John-Paul O'Neill, a writer for Red Issue, a fan newspaper dedicated to Manchester United. "They'll sell their own grandmother if they could."

But to understand the drive, to grasp the enormous popularity of this team, you have to know about its past and the ambition that pushed Manchester United to the top, only to nearly destroy it.

Everything goes back to Munich, Germany, and 1958, to the crumpled fuselage of an airplane and the dead men who lay inside. They were going to conquer Europe the way no other English team had done, then perished on a snowy airport runway. It was at that moment the legend of Manchester United was forged.

It had always been the second team in town. In the early days of British soccer, Manchester City was the dominant soccer team of England's third-largest city. Founded in the 1870s by a group of railroad workers, Man U was originally known as Newton Heath and bounced between England's first and third divisions. But after World War II, United hired one of Manchester City's top players to be its coach. And in a few short years, Matt Busby had built the most powerful team in the country.

But that wasn't enough — Busby wanted to control Europe. Until then, the English soccer federation forbade its teams to play international competition. In 1957 and in early 1958, with his most talented club, Busby defied that order and began his conquest of Europe.

On Feb. 6, 1958, on the way home from a 3-3 tie in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, the team stopped to refuel near Munich. As the plane attempted to take off again, it plummeted to the ground, killing eight members of the team, including Duncan Edwards, its best player.

Busby clung to life for several days before recovering. When he returned, he vowed to win the European championship his players had died pursuing.

"This created a great mystique," says Mihir Bose, a British journalist and the author of "Manchester Unlimited," a chronicle of the team's financial rise. "The young dying anywhere is tragic. This created a tremendous aura for Manchester United."

After 1958, United became the team of tragedy and hope and rebirth — and the crowds surged to see them play. And finally in 1968, 10 years after the crash, Busby won his European Cup with Bill Foulkes, a survivor of the Munich crash, scoring the winning goal in the semifinal against Real Madrid.

"We carried that with us," Draper says. "Getting back to a point of prestige and dominance in 1968, that's movie stuff. We became popular after that."

Then, with his dream realized, Busby retired the following year. The team had grown old, and for more than two decades, United plummeted, falling out of England's First Division in the early 1970s. By the late 1980s, the team's huge crowds could not hide the fact that the franchise was woefully behind the dominant Liverpool club, and it was thrown up for sale for the 10 million pounds.

But before the team could be bartered away, Ferguson was hired from Glasgow. And like Busby so many years before him, Ferguson went on a crusade to dominate Europe. He built a young, homegrown team of flashy young stars such as David Beckham, and their rise coincided with England's new made-for-television Premier League, which replaced the First Division.

Just as the world was tuning in to see English soccer as it never had before, reborn Man U was dominating the Premier league, winning titles in 1993, 1994, 1996, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2003.

Then Man U hired Edward Freedman, a merchandising expert from London who proved adept at slapping the team's name on anything he could find. Soon after, the money started pouring in.

"If you look at the business model and the way they have protected the brand name, they haven't really missed any significant opportunities," Carter says.

The fact is you can live your entire life through Manchester United.

The team owns a 24-hour television network, a radio station, a chain of clothing shops called the Megastore and a chain of restaurants named Red Café. You can buy a cellphone through the team and bet on sporting events through the team. And if you walk in at the team's home grounds, Old Trafford, you can sit down with someone who will open a savings account for you, find you a mortgage, refinance your home, sell you insurance or make your travel arrangements.

This means essentially you could wake up in your Manchester United pajamas bought at the Megastore, walk around your home financed by a Man U associate, dine at a Manchester United Red Café and pay for the meal with money from a Manchester United bank account.

And you thought Cowboys fans had no life.

"It might seem a bit bizarre," Draper says. "But a lot of the services are built on trust. The relationship can be quite peculiar if we aren't careful. These people are family. You are going to give them a good price and service."

According to figures provided by the accounting firm Deloitte & Touche, Man U brought in 116 million pounds in 2000, roughly about $184 million American at today's rate. And that was two years before the deal with Nike, reported to be worth more than $400 million over 13 years.

"They have sold an enormous amount of product," says Don Remlinger, the global brand director for Nike soccer. "They have substantially exceeded our (sales) expectations so far."

Today, the team that sat in the corner with a humble 10 million-pound price tag in 1986 has 50 million fans in more than 100 countries. And by the end of this month's American tour, Man U figures to pick up a few more converts.

Here is just how savvy Man U is with its contracts: While the team must follow Premier league rules by keeping the bulk of its matches in England off live television, it has cut a different deal that puts those same matches on live television everywhere else in the world. It's a difference that is worth millions in marketing, especially in China and Malaysia, where United's popularity has become enormous.

"It's not that they're just brand managers, they're brand extenders," Carter says.

All this comes at a price. Much the way the New York Yankees are hated here in America for their incessant exposure, United is reviled by the other English teams who have been left behind. Crowds throng to taunt them and in the ugliest moments chant "Munich, Munich, Munich" and wave their arms like airplanes falling from the sky.

"United is the most-loved team in England and also the most-hated team in England," O'Neill says. "They've got the best fan base, and people just can't stand it."

The celebrity has also taken a toll on the most loyal of United fans, the ones who used to fill Old Trafford back in the days when the team wasn't the most glamorous entity in all of sports. In the early 1990s, Man U used funds provided by the English government along with its own money to renovate its 93-year-old stadium that was once bombed by the Germans in World War II, expanding it to 68,000 seats and adding luxury options. The problem is that the team's celebrity has pushed out the blue-collar fans, the ones who can't afford United's sudden high prices.

Many of the fans who come to Old Trafford aren't from Manchester anymore. In a lot of cases, they aren't even from England but rather tourists who want to get a glimpse of the country's most fabled football club.

"United used to have a reputation for the noisiest fans, but in the last few years, you can't even stand up at matches," O'Neill says. "Their success is hurting it a lot. You get people who just want to be associated with the reflective glory of the thing. There is sort of an animosity between the true fans and the new ones."

But this is often what happens when a team gets good. It probably would shock no one that the most lucrative team in the world has its share of bandwagon fans. This is the price of popularity.

Not that the Manchester United would mind. The biggest money machine in sports rolls on with a new continent to conquer.

----
Celtic and its 'unequaled' tradition hit field at UW

By Greg Bishop
Seattle Times staff reporter

The "other" team took the practice field here yesterday fresh off a transatlantic flight the day before, ready for Seattle's soccer showdown and running on adrenaline and not much else.

It's a European soccer club that drips rich tradition like a pint of Guinness, born for charity and revered — or hated — the world over. A historical icon decorated in green and white, followed by an estimated 15 million people across the globe, that plays its home games in a stadium locals like to call Paradise.

Formally, it's the Celtic Football Club of the Scottish Premier League. Informally, at least in Seattle, it's the most intriguing team few know anything about, particularly in a Tuesday matchup with worldwide phenomenon Manchester United at Seahawks Stadium.

"Celtic has a history and tradition that is unequaled in world football," said Paul Larkin, a 29-year-old writer from Edinburgh, Scotland, via e-mail last week. "It has evolved into a football club which has undoubtedly the biggest support in the world."

He's talking about an estimated 55,000 season-ticket holders — with a 20,000-long waiting list — one European Cup championship, 38 Scottish League championships, 31 Scottish Cups and 12 Scottish League Cups.

Founded in 1888 by a Marist priest named Brother Walfrid to raise money for poor Irish immigrants living in the east end of Glasgow, Scotland, the club resonates with supporters on a number of different levels.

Of the soccer teams in Scotland, only two matter: Celtic and Rangers, and they are divided on several lines, including religion and class standing.

"That's what attracts a lot of people," said Martin Connor, president of the Seattle Celtic Supporters Club. "It was founded as a charity, and they still have really big charitable links. "The Rangers were always the team of the establishment in Scotland, founded by Protestants. For the longest time they had a hiring policy that refused to hire Catholic players. That only changed about 10 to 15 years ago, and it was a tad embarrassing to the country."

David McNally, sales and marketing director, calls the team "a really big deal in a small market" back in Scotland.

And no year stands bigger in Celtic lore than 1967. With a group of players who were all from within 15 miles of Glasgow, "The Bhoys" won every competition they entered, including the team's one and only European Cup. Pictures of all 11 starters from that team hang from the walls at Kells, an Irish bar and restaurant in Pioneer Square.

The season starts in August and runs until the middle or end of May, but Celtic football is celebrated year round.

There's a computer video game about the team and four dozen Web sites devoted to it, including the official one that broadcasts all matches on delay. There are also several books, including Larkin's "The Football Club: First, last and always" and even bobblehead dolls of popular players.

"Obviously, it's big," said Jackie McNamara, a Celtic fan long before he made the roster, at practice yesterday at the University of Washington. "It's a fantastic club to be involved with, a dream come true."

McNamara said he didn't mind the lack of recognition in the area, and Celtic supporters agreed with him in principal. Yes, Manchester United is a big deal, a great team. No, they aren't looking for a little bit more respect.

Celtic players and fans said their own tradition should speak for itself. And if it doesn't, then go to your local library or hop on your computer, because several others have spoken for it.

"Manchester United is big on hype," Larkin said. "Form is temporary, but class is permanent. If you want to experience greatness once in your life, go and watch Celtic."

Notes

• Kells will entertain Celtic supporters with a variety of celebrations, closing down Post Alley in Pioneer Square between Stewart and Virginia streets. Today and tomorrow, the celebration goes from 1 p.m. to closing time.

• According to a Reuters report, Manchester United landed yesterday at Portland International Airport and whisked its players to their downtown hotel. The greeting party, often of considerable size in other countries, was a dozen fans and one U.S. television reporter.

• After a late release of tickets for Tuesday's match, a "few hundred" were available yesterday, according to a Ticketmaster agent.

Copyright © 2003 The Seattle Times Company
----
below:
Atop a double-decker bus, Man U players hold the English FA Cup, UEFA Champions Cup, and English Premiership Trophy after Manchester won the treble in 1999.




pic118727.jpg
 
Previous Man U visit to Seattle (No Moz Content)

Man U-Sounders 1982 match drew few fans

By Bob Condotta
Seattle Times staff reporter

Manchester United's sold-out-in-three-hours, hyped-for-months match in Seattle on Tuesday is in stark contrast to the last time the famed soccer club set foot in town.

Manchester United played in Seattle on May 20, 1982, against the Seattle Sounders in the Pacific Northwest International Tournament. The game was at the Kingdome, but just 12,639 attended.

"It's amazing, really," wrote a fan named Steve to a Man U fan Web site, in remembering that last visit this week. "The last tour in '82 was poorly attended — and United were crap!"

Indeed they were, as a Sounders team that was just 2-6 in the early part of North American Soccer League play beat Manchester, 3-0.

Afterward, Man U coach Ron Atkinson fumed.

"Game?" he said. "What game? There was no game tonight. We didn't play at all out there."

Those were different times for Man U, however. Under Atkinson, who coached from 1981-86, Manchester United wasn't quite the soccer juggernaut it is today.

The Pacific Northwest International Tournament was a four-team, round-robin event held right in the middle of the Sounders' league season. Other participants were the Vancouver Whitecaps of the North American Soccer League and Hajduk Split of Yugoslavia. Man U lost to Vancouver 3-1 in the opening game of the tournament while the Sounders beat Split, 3-0.

In the next round, the Sounders dominated Man U at the start, with Mark Peterson — who apparently was having a Jeff Cirillo-like season going into the game — scoring twice in the first half, putting Seattle ahead for good just 7 minutes, 17 seconds in. Peterson was named player of the game as Seattle took a 3-0 halftime lead and made it hold up.

That Sounders team included two former players from Manchester City — Man U's crosstown rival — including Nicky Reid, who boasted afterward that he was going to go home and tell his mom to "call the Evening News."

According to the Rednews, Manchester United hasn't been back to the United States since. The '82 tour is memorable for Man U fans mostly because United didn't provide tickets for traveling supporters. Atkinson reportedly cursed at one fan who made the trip anyway.

The 1982 trip wasn't Man U's first to the United States, however. According to the Rednews, Man U first toured America in 1949. Man U again visited in 1952, a visit most memorable because the team met Bing Crosby in Hollywood.

----
Below:
CRAIG FUJII / THE SEATTLE TIMES
Peter Ward (9) of the Sounders and Manchester's Gordon McQueen try to head the ball at the Kingdome on May 20, 1982.




pic118728.jpg
 
its not really that much of a rivalry though...relatons between Celtic and Manchester United have historicly been pretty good.
 
> Man U and Celtic to play in Seattle Tuedsday night!!

> ----

> Manchester Mystique

> By Les Carpenter
> Seattle Times staff reporter

> The money machine sweeps around the world ringing a cash register melody
> of pounds, francs, yen and dinars. Every day, new loot piles in from the
> satellites in the sky and the T-shirts on the racks, filling the vaults of
> the old stadium, until it seems this is no longer about soccer but rather
> the heavy smell of commerce.

> Sport's wealthiest franchise rolls into Seattle on Tuesday to play a match
> that doesn't even count, and for its efforts, Manchester United will pick
> up a little less than $1 million. The bigger profits will come not from
> the scoreboard but rather from the lure of an untapped currency for the
> team — the American dollar.

> It only fits. After all, no other sports franchise has been as adept at
> selling its name.

> In the 11 years of England's Premier League, Man U has won eight league
> titles, has taken the FA Cup three times and the European Champions Cup
> once. It won all three in 1999, in an unprecedented feat called the
> treble. But the real victories have come afterward when the receipts are
> counted and the money stashed.

> Australian media baron Rupert Murdoch once reportedly offered $1 billion
> to purchase United — an unheard-of figure even in today's fast-spending,
> George Steinbrenner-Mark Cuban-Paul Allen world of sports. And because of
> this offer, most believe the team to be worth at least the $1 billion he
> pledged.

> A billion dollars? For a soccer team?

> "Who really knows what it's worth?" says David Carter, an
> economist with the Sports Business Group in Los Angeles. "Let's just
> say it's a really good return on investment. It's luck and TV and prudent
> management."

> Or as Peter Draper, the man in charge of marketing for Manchester United,
> says: "We have always showed good business style."

> Which is remarkable given that just 16 years ago, the team was for sale at
> the cut-rate price of 10 million pounds (nearly $16 million in today's
> American dollars). A once-glorious franchise tucked on a flea-market
> shelf.

> Then out of nowhere, a Scottish coach named Alex Ferguson came to save
> them. The moribund United rose mightily at just the moment English soccer
> was putting itself on satellite television for all the world to see.

> In the sudden confluence of on-field flash and global saturation, Man U
> became the most glamorous team in the world. Now nothing escapes the great
> money arm of Manchester United. As the games beam farther and farther
> across the planet, finding new countries and new legions of fans, the
> merchandising soon follows with shirts by Nike, soft drinks by Pepsi,
> until this all seems like a summer blockbuster that never ends.

> "They're so ruthless," says John-Paul O'Neill, a writer for Red
> Issue, a fan newspaper dedicated to Manchester United. "They'll sell
> their own grandmother if they could."

> But to understand the drive, to grasp the enormous popularity of this
> team, you have to know about its past and the ambition that pushed
> Manchester United to the top, only to nearly destroy it.

> Everything goes back to Munich, Germany, and 1958, to the crumpled
> fuselage of an airplane and the dead men who lay inside. They were going
> to conquer Europe the way no other English team had done, then perished on
> a snowy airport runway. It was at that moment the legend of Manchester
> United was forged.

> It had always been the second team in town. In the early days of British
> soccer, Manchester City was the dominant soccer team of England's
> third-largest city. Founded in the 1870s by a group of railroad workers,
> Man U was originally known as Newton Heath and bounced between England's
> first and third divisions. But after World War II, United hired one of
> Manchester City's top players to be its coach. And in a few short years,
> Matt Busby had built the most powerful team in the country.

> But that wasn't enough — Busby wanted to control Europe. Until then, the
> English soccer federation forbade its teams to play international
> competition. In 1957 and in early 1958, with his most talented club, Busby
> defied that order and began his conquest of Europe.

> On Feb. 6, 1958, on the way home from a 3-3 tie in Belgrade, Yugoslavia,
> the team stopped to refuel near Munich. As the plane attempted to take off
> again, it plummeted to the ground, killing eight members of the team,
> including Duncan Edwards, its best player.

> Busby clung to life for several days before recovering. When he returned,
> he vowed to win the European championship his players had died pursuing.

> "This created a great mystique," says Mihir Bose, a British
> journalist and the author of "Manchester Unlimited," a chronicle
> of the team's financial rise. "The young dying anywhere is tragic.
> This created a tremendous aura for Manchester United."

> After 1958, United became the team of tragedy and hope and rebirth — and
> the crowds surged to see them play. And finally in 1968, 10 years after
> the crash, Busby won his European Cup with Bill Foulkes, a survivor of the
> Munich crash, scoring the winning goal in the semifinal against Real
> Madrid.

> "We carried that with us," Draper says. "Getting back to a
> point of prestige and dominance in 1968, that's movie stuff. We became
> popular after that."

> Then, with his dream realized, Busby retired the following year. The team
> had grown old, and for more than two decades, United plummeted, falling
> out of England's First Division in the early 1970s. By the late 1980s, the
> team's huge crowds could not hide the fact that the franchise was woefully
> behind the dominant Liverpool club, and it was thrown up for sale for the
> 10 million pounds.

> But before the team could be bartered away, Ferguson was hired from
> Glasgow. And like Busby so many years before him, Ferguson went on a
> crusade to dominate Europe. He built a young, homegrown team of flashy
> young stars such as David Beckham, and their rise coincided with England's
> new made-for-television Premier League, which replaced the First Division.

> Just as the world was tuning in to see English soccer as it never had
> before, reborn Man U was dominating the Premier league, winning titles in
> 1993, 1994, 1996, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2003.

> Then Man U hired Edward Freedman, a merchandising expert from London who
> proved adept at slapping the team's name on anything he could find. Soon
> after, the money started pouring in.

> "If you look at the business model and the way they have protected
> the brand name, they haven't really missed any significant
> opportunities," Carter says.

> The fact is you can live your entire life through Manchester United.

> The team owns a 24-hour television network, a radio station, a chain of
> clothing shops called the Megastore and a chain of restaurants named Red
> Café. You can buy a cellphone through the team and bet on sporting events
> through the team. And if you walk in at the team's home grounds, Old
> Trafford, you can sit down with someone who will open a savings account
> for you, find you a mortgage, refinance your home, sell you insurance or
> make your travel arrangements.

> This means essentially you could wake up in your Manchester United pajamas
> bought at the Megastore, walk around your home financed by a Man U
> associate, dine at a Manchester United Red Café and pay for the meal with
> money from a Manchester United bank account.

> And you thought Cowboys fans had no life.

> "It might seem a bit bizarre," Draper says. "But a lot of
> the services are built on trust. The relationship can be quite peculiar if
> we aren't careful. These people are family. You are going to give them a
> good price and service."

> According to figures provided by the accounting firm Deloitte &
> Touche, Man U brought in 116 million pounds in 2000, roughly about $184
> million American at today's rate. And that was two years before the deal
> with Nike, reported to be worth more than $400 million over 13 years.

> "They have sold an enormous amount of product," says Don
> Remlinger, the global brand director for Nike soccer. "They have
> substantially exceeded our (sales) expectations so far."

> Today, the team that sat in the corner with a humble 10 million-pound
> price tag in 1986 has 50 million fans in more than 100 countries. And by
> the end of this month's American tour, Man U figures to pick up a few more
> converts.

> Here is just how savvy Man U is with its contracts: While the team must
> follow Premier league rules by keeping the bulk of its matches in England
> off live television, it has cut a different deal that puts those same
> matches on live television everywhere else in the world. It's a difference
> that is worth millions in marketing, especially in China and Malaysia,
> where United's popularity has become enormous.

> "It's not that they're just brand managers, they're brand
> extenders," Carter says.

> All this comes at a price. Much the way the New York Yankees are hated
> here in America for their incessant exposure, United is reviled by the
> other English teams who have been left behind. Crowds throng to taunt them
> and in the ugliest moments chant "Munich, Munich, Munich" and
> wave their arms like airplanes falling from the sky.

> "United is the most-loved team in England and also the most-hated
> team in England," O'Neill says. "They've got the best fan base,
> and people just can't stand it."

> The celebrity has also taken a toll on the most loyal of United fans, the
> ones who used to fill Old Trafford back in the days when the team wasn't
> the most glamorous entity in all of sports. In the early 1990s, Man U used
> funds provided by the English government along with its own money to
> renovate its 93-year-old stadium that was once bombed by the Germans in
> World War II, expanding it to 68,000 seats and adding luxury options. The
> problem is that the team's celebrity has pushed out the blue-collar fans,
> the ones who can't afford United's sudden high prices.

> Many of the fans who come to Old Trafford aren't from Manchester anymore.
> In a lot of cases, they aren't even from England but rather tourists who
> want to get a glimpse of the country's most fabled football club.

> "United used to have a reputation for the noisiest fans, but in the
> last few years, you can't even stand up at matches," O'Neill says.
> "Their success is hurting it a lot. You get people who just want to
> be associated with the reflective glory of the thing. There is sort of an
> animosity between the true fans and the new ones."

> But this is often what happens when a team gets good. It probably would
> shock no one that the most lucrative team in the world has its share of
> bandwagon fans. This is the price of popularity.

> Not that the Manchester United would mind. The biggest money machine in
> sports rolls on with a new continent to conquer.

> ----
> Celtic and its 'unequaled' tradition hit field at UW

> By Greg Bishop
> Seattle Times staff reporter

> The "other" team took the practice field here yesterday fresh
> off a transatlantic flight the day before, ready for Seattle's soccer
> showdown and running on adrenaline and not much else.

> It's a European soccer club that drips rich tradition like a pint of
> Guinness, born for charity and revered — or hated — the world over. A
> historical icon decorated in green and white, followed by an estimated 15
> million people across the globe, that plays its home games in a stadium
> locals like to call Paradise.

> Formally, it's the Celtic Football Club of the Scottish Premier League.
> Informally, at least in Seattle, it's the most intriguing team few know
> anything about, particularly in a Tuesday matchup with worldwide
> phenomenon Manchester United at Seahawks Stadium.

> "Celtic has a history and tradition that is unequaled in world
> football," said Paul Larkin, a 29-year-old writer from Edinburgh,
> Scotland, via e-mail last week. "It has evolved into a football club
> which has undoubtedly the biggest support in the world."

> He's talking about an estimated 55,000 season-ticket holders — with a
> 20,000-long waiting list — one European Cup championship, 38 Scottish
> League championships, 31 Scottish Cups and 12 Scottish League Cups.

> Founded in 1888 by a Marist priest named Brother Walfrid to raise money
> for poor Irish immigrants living in the east end of Glasgow, Scotland, the
> club resonates with supporters on a number of different levels.

> Of the soccer teams in Scotland, only two matter: Celtic and Rangers, and
> they are divided on several lines, including religion and class standing.

> "That's what attracts a lot of people," said Martin Connor,
> president of the Seattle Celtic Supporters Club. "It was founded as a
> charity, and they still have really big charitable links. "The
> Rangers were always the team of the establishment in Scotland, founded by
> Protestants. For the longest time they had a hiring policy that refused to
> hire Catholic players. That only changed about 10 to 15 years ago, and it
> was a tad embarrassing to the country."

> David McNally, sales and marketing director, calls the team "a really
> big deal in a small market" back in Scotland.

> And no year stands bigger in Celtic lore than 1967. With a group of
> players who were all from within 15 miles of Glasgow, "The
> Bhoys" won every competition they entered, including the team's one
> and only European Cup. Pictures of all 11 starters from that team hang
> from the walls at Kells, an Irish bar and restaurant in Pioneer Square.

> The season starts in August and runs until the middle or end of May, but
> Celtic football is celebrated year round.

> There's a computer video game about the team and four dozen Web sites
> devoted to it, including the official one that broadcasts all matches on
> delay. There are also several books, including Larkin's "The Football
> Club: First, last and always" and even bobblehead dolls of popular
> players.

> "Obviously, it's big," said Jackie McNamara, a Celtic fan long
> before he made the roster, at practice yesterday at the University of
> Washington. "It's a fantastic club to be involved with, a dream come
> true."

> McNamara said he didn't mind the lack of recognition in the area, and
> Celtic supporters agreed with him in principal. Yes, Manchester United is
> a big deal, a great team. No, they aren't looking for a little bit more
> respect.

> Celtic players and fans said their own tradition should speak for itself.
> And if it doesn't, then go to your local library or hop on your computer,
> because several others have spoken for it.

> "Manchester United is big on hype," Larkin said. "Form is
> temporary, but class is permanent. If you want to experience greatness
> once in your life, go and watch Celtic."

> Notes

> • Kells will entertain Celtic supporters with a variety of celebrations,
> closing down Post Alley in Pioneer Square between Stewart and Virginia
> streets. Today and tomorrow, the celebration goes from 1 p.m. to closing
> time.

> • According to a Reuters report, Manchester United landed yesterday at
> Portland International Airport and whisked its players to their downtown
> hotel. The greeting party, often of considerable size in other countries,
> was a dozen fans and one U.S. television reporter.

> • After a late release of tickets for Tuesday's match, a "few
> hundred" were available yesterday, according to a Ticketmaster agent.

> Copyright © 2003 The Seattle Times Company
> ----
> below:
> Atop a double-decker bus, Man U players hold the English FA Cup, UEFA
> Champions Cup, and English Premiership Trophy after Manchester won the
> treble in 1999.

I will bet my bottom dollar that Celtic will beat hat overrated heap of tripe that is Moan United.....probably .
 
Re: Previous Man U visit to Seattle (No Moz Content)

> Man U-Sounders 1982 match drew few fans

> By Bob Condotta
> Seattle Times staff reporter

> Manchester United's sold-out-in-three-hours, hyped-for-months match in
> Seattle on Tuesday is in stark contrast to the last time the famed soccer
> club set foot in town.

> Manchester United played in Seattle on May 20, 1982, against the Seattle
> Sounders in the Pacific Northwest International Tournament. The game was
> at the Kingdome, but just 12,639 attended.

> "It's amazing, really," wrote a fan named Steve to a Man U fan
> Web site, in remembering that last visit this week. "The last tour in
> '82 was poorly attended — and United were crap!"

> Indeed they were, as a Sounders team that was just 2-6 in the early part
> of North American Soccer League play beat Manchester, 3-0.

> Afterward, Man U coach Ron Atkinson fumed.

> "Game?" he said. "What game? There was no game tonight. We
> didn't play at all out there."

> Those were different times for Man U, however. Under Atkinson, who coached
> from 1981-86, Manchester United wasn't quite the soccer juggernaut it is
> today.

> The Pacific Northwest International Tournament was a four-team,
> round-robin event held right in the middle of the Sounders' league season.
> Other participants were the Vancouver Whitecaps of the North American
> Soccer League and Hajduk Split of Yugoslavia. Man U lost to Vancouver 3-1
> in the opening game of the tournament while the Sounders beat Split, 3-0.

> In the next round, the Sounders dominated Man U at the start, with Mark
> Peterson — who apparently was having a Jeff Cirillo-like season going into
> the game — scoring twice in the first half, putting Seattle ahead for good
> just 7 minutes, 17 seconds in. Peterson was named player of the game as
> Seattle took a 3-0 halftime lead and made it hold up.

> That Sounders team included two former players from Manchester City — Man
> U's crosstown rival — including Nicky Reid, who boasted afterward that he
> was going to go home and tell his mom to "call the Evening
> News."

> According to the Rednews, Manchester United hasn't been back to the United
> States since. The '82 tour is memorable for Man U fans mostly because
> United didn't provide tickets for traveling supporters. Atkinson
> reportedly cursed at one fan who made the trip anyway.

> The 1982 trip wasn't Man U's first to the United States, however.
> According to the Rednews, Man U first toured America in 1949. Man U again
> visited in 1952, a visit most memorable because the team met Bing Crosby
> in Hollywood.

> ----
> Below:
> CRAIG FUJII / THE SEATTLE TIMES
> Peter Ward (9) of the Sounders and Manchester's Gordon McQueen try to head
> the ball at the Kingdome on May 20, 1982.

I dance exactly like that number 9.
 
> I will bet my bottom dollar that Celtic will beat that overrated heap of
> tripe that is Moan United.....probably .

I didn't mean any of that. Patrick made me do it.
 
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