Bottom line is I can't cheer for this franchise

TIPPING POINT:Manchester United represent all that is wrong in the money-grabbing modern world of football so it's 'Vamos Barca' for me on Saturday night, writes BRIAN O'CONNOR

IT HAS come to this – the boy who damn near cried when Alan Sunderland put in that last-minute 1979 FA Cup Final winner, and reckoned Steve Coppell was just about the coolest geezer on the planet in his Bay City Roller-barnet pomp, really can’t care less if Manchester United win this weekend’s Champions League Final against Barcelona or not. In fact when push comes to shove, it’s going to be a case of Vamos Barca in at least one part of this Premier League-worshipping benighted wet rock.

Maybe it’s some sort of sepia-tinted nostalgia. Or maybe it’s just growing up, or down, or out. But the idea of doing a mischief if Brand United 2011 doesn’t win just seems ridiculous. It’s like reaching for a can of petrol and a packet of Zip on the back of Microsoft’s Annual Report: fair enough if you’ve got shares, but really what’s it got to do with those of us currently living in genteel Weimar poverty.

Does it really register with ordinary fans anymore if a multi-millionaire, bullet-headed, “19” shaving, whore-monger like Wayne Rooney misses out on a medal? Does it even register with Rooney?

Even allowing for an off-the-field gracelessness that still somehow can’t quite over-shadow a truly wondrous talent, didn’t his early-season manoeuvring prove once and for all that talent is for sale to any other conglomerate with a big enough cheque book? Any medal is simply a potential extra zero to a signing-on fee.

That’s not to say the basic desire of individuals to do better for themselves didn’t apply in the past. But there is a corporate, PR-spun detachment to business nowadays that makes a player’s word about as bankable as a two dollar bill. If bullshit was electricity, the modern football industry would be a power-station.

Of course the joy of football is that as long as there is a Messi to reduce it to the magical status of childhood there will always be a pull for the majority of the globe. But while there remain players whose talents have tattooed themselves on to our consciousness, a devotion to the modern corporate reality of a club is increasingly becoming downright nuts.

This isn’t some bleat about the “good old days” when Jock Stein could assemble a European Cup winning team from within a shouting distance radius of Parkhead. Or Peter Taylor could weed out some non-league rough for Brian Clough and together they could shape it into a European diamond for Nottingham Forest.

The globalisation of the game and the overwhelming influence of TV money have resulted in a concentration of excellence into a few uber-rich conglomerates that make fancy odds of Forest or Celtic ever again getting within a donkey’s screech of another European Cup Final seem like a rip-off.

Fighting that is futile. And trying to counter it with Luddite proclamations of returning to the game’s grassroots is even more futile. The League of Ireland retains a notably vocal, if suspiciously barmy, support sect. But facing away from the Premiership in favour of a pilgrimage to Dalymount is like whittling wood outside Ikea: people think you’re just odd.

But what, or who, does the Manchester United of today represent in Saturday night’s final? It’s hardly the people of Sale, or Chorlton, or Stretford. There are City fans who will tell you they are the real representation of Manchester itself, although that argument held more water when the blue club wasn’t spending money like a Kennedy in a Boston brothel.

The answer isn’t even England, really, since so much of the flavour of the modern game there is due to playing talent from around the world.

Instead there are millions around the globe whose devotion to United has no relevance to geography but is simply the end product of an arbitrary televisual preference which is at least partly facilitated by having a current team whose core contains players from Mexico, Brazil, Serbia, even north-east Ecuador.

United and all the top European clubs are a franchise, as recognisable a brand in China as it is in Chile and just as remote to the core support of even just a couple of decades ago. The modern day distance between top players and fans has been expounded upon to death but repetition doesn’t negate the basic validity of the argument.

Ultimately what United really represent on Saturday is the Premier League, a multi-billion Euro business whose only allegiance is to the bottom line. And United as a brand is a huge influence on making the figures underneath that bottom line even bigger.

In fact how long will it be before the ubiquitous “Man U” has about as much relevance to Manchester as the Los Angeles Rams had to LA after they moved to St Louis? Or the Baltimore Colts had after they moved to Indianapolis? That’s the thing about franchises on a major scale. They’re mobile.

In comparison, United’s opponents this weekend are almost a throwback. Of the usual first-choice starting eleven, eight are Spanish but much more startling is how eight are products of the club’s youth system. Messi is one of those having spent nearly half his life living in Barcelona. Pep Guardiola had as distinguished a playing career for the club as he now enjoys as manager.

Throw in the Catalan element that is always integral to Barcelona, not to mention the not wholly irrelevant fact that the football club is run by and for the fans, and there is no problem identifying what or who the 2009 winners represent.

But Barcelona are exceptional, not just because of Messi and those midfield magicians, Iniesta and Xavi. There has been a panache about their business that has impressed for a very long time.

Certainly one of the most stylish pieces of football business was to end a 111-year history of keeping the shirt free from sponsorship by allowing Unicef on the front for the last six years. Sadly that will end next season when the Qatar Foundation will feature. But there has been such a reaction against the move that it isn’t completely naive to suggest there could yet be a return to a plain shirt.

But then that same shirt contains a simple motto: “Mes que un club” – More than a club.

Now that’s something worth kissing.