Love Them, Hate Them.(Brief Article)

It was as if long-lost English cousins had come to town. Last week executives from the richest, most successful sports team in the United Kingdom arrived in Manhattan. They bore a striking resemblance to their swaggering Yankee hosts, who introduced them to the befuddled New York media as if American baseball and European football were two branches of one Anglo-Saxon sports family. Manchester United, the legendary English football club--and the only one with a star married to a Spice Girl--announced a joint-marketing deal with the parent company of the storied New York Yankees--the only team with a star dating a Miss Universe.

For a moment, it all seemed to make sense. These teams are the perennial champs of their respective national sports--teams that fans either love, or love to hate. To hear the new partners tell it, the union was a no-brainer, the latest chapter in the on- going globalization of sport. ManU, which already has a worldwide following, will help the less well-traveled Bronx Bombers sell T shirts and win converts around the world. In return, the Yankees will help United pry open a U.S. market that has stubbornly refused to embrace the world's No. 1 sport. ManU's marketing director Peter Draper suggested that Americans wouldn't be able to resist his team: "Manchester United is pop meets sport. We're as sexy and glamorous as we can be."

That may be, but most of the excitement was on the Manchester side of the aisle. The "strategic alliance" drew headlines across the United Kingdom. Some fans ranted against ManU's renewed efforts at "world domination," and vowed to dump Yankee caps in the garbage, while others celebrated like missionaries after a baptism. Shares of the publicly traded club soared as high as 247 pence from an opening of 214 on the news.

Americans have been warned before that foreign football is coming. Even the arrival of Pele, the Brazilian great, could not get a professional U.S. league off the ground in the 1970s. The World Cup finals in 1994 created a buzz--that died almost as soon as the last whistle blew. And the big ManU-Yankee deal? "If caller reaction is any indication, no ...