Elon Musk’s takeover wasn’t even the biggest joke at Manchester United’s expense this week.
The richest man on the planet was only teasing when he pretended to be buying the club in a tersely enticing tweet, and that was bad enough. On the same day, however, in an interview with the Financial Times, Mercedes chief Toto Wolff said he had studied the club — in an effort to find out why great teams fall apart.
Wolff wasn’t mocking, merely, as the leader of a Mercedes unit who had dominated F1, seeing Manchester United as a similar sporting enterprise before their recent fall.