Manchester United’s ascension to the English football championship for the eighth time in 11 years seems not just inevitable, but unfair.
The millions they make from winning yet again will only make it easier for them to win next year, and, arguably, on and on for all eternity. It seems an unbreakable cycle of success.
Yet we should not despair at or grumble about Manchester United’s apparently unassailable domination of football. It is Darwinism in action. And therein lies the hope for supporters of normal teams.
Just like the Darwinian top dog of any particular era, Sir Alex Ferguson’s boys seem to have all the advantages, from the trophies to the trophy wives. The better they get, the more support they attract, the more money they make, the better still they get.
The relentless logic of that most Darwinistic of mechanisms, the market, would ensure that even if Beckham had gone abroad, United would have barely missed a beat, just as they didn’t when Eric Cantona left.
Ferguson would simply have used the Beckham money to attract any other number seven he wanted, and in the new season, as United dominated the UK premiership yet again, Beckham would barely have been remembered. In sport, of all things, such a Darwinian process should be seen as natural. But even though they are so successful, Darwinism will also see to it that United will fall. It is probable that in 20 years, they will be struggling in the lower divisions while some unimaginable force — Rushden and Diamonds or Hartlepool — becomes the 2020s top brand.
Another notable ”brand” shares Manchester United’s enviable position — and their less enviable fate. The United States— the Rushden and Diamonds of global politics a few generations ago — seems currently unbeatable. Like Manchester United, granted their championship by an unexpected Leeds win over Arsenal, the US gets the benefits of luck as well as of hard work. The easy caving in of Iraq is just one example.
Yet, like the Roman or the British Empire, we can be sure that the US will, like Manchester United, be relegated soon enough. —