Elon Musk reportedly has an interest in Liverpool. The father of the world’s richest man believes his son has pondered a takeover; supporters can only pray this does not happen.
Sometimes, it would be wonderful if Liverpool had some extra money to spend. In theory, links to the world’s richest person sound great—but Elon Musk would be a nightmare at Anfield.
First things first: where are these links coming from? Well, from Elon’s dad, who claims to have known “quite a few of the Beatles” through a family link to the city.
Quite how many Beatles he thinks there were is unknown, but moving on. He said his son is “obviously” keen on buying Liverpool from FSG, with the club now valued at $5.4 billion.
That’s about one-hundredth of Musk’s net worth. So, what’s not to like about having the Tesla and SpaceX CEO at the helm? Well…
You’ll Never Work, Elon
Quite simply, Musk and Liverpool are a fundamental clash of ideologies. FSG are clearly ultra-capitalists, so there’s no point pretending they have always been perfectly aligned with the club and the city, but the South African billionaire would be on another level entirely.
The club might as well sell up to Mr Burns. Some of Musk’s antics have been similarly cartoonish — and on occasion rather more sinister, like when he opened a factory in breach of local rules, and 450 workers got Covid.
Musk also holds a position in the incoming Donald Trump administration. We don’t know a great deal about John Henry’s personal beliefs, but he has at least always listened to fan concerns, and it’s hard to see the people of Liverpool welcoming someone so publicly aligned with the Republicans with open arms.
There’s only room for one high-profile right winger at Anfield. His name is Mohamed Salah.
Elon Musk throws tantrums
No toys are safe when Musk is the one in the pram. Even if things were somehow to start off well enough at Liverpool, it wouldn’t be long before they took a turn.
Think back to the infamous incident where he offered to supply a submarine to help with a cave rescue. Nice gesture, right?
Maybe so, but it quickly turned sour when he was told it wouldn’t work. He took to Twitter (as it then was, before he renamed it X after completing a value-tumbling takeover) to call an actual cave rescuer a “p–o guy”, having spent at least $52,000 on a private investigator to find dirt on him.
An increased budget at Liverpool would be nice, but it wouldn’t last long if the club started hiring detectives to sniff around anyone who had made a slight criticism. And we thought Marcelo Bielsa and Spygate was bad enough…
Musk likes to be in control
If there’s one thing FSG has tended to do well, it’s hiring experts. From Jurgen Klopp to Michael Edwards, the Americans have picked the best people and broadly let them get on with their jobs.
One of Musk’s first actions at Twitter was to slash the workforce by as much as 80 percent. It turns out some of the people he let go might have been doing something important, with service outages up since the takeover.
Meanwhile, he has taken on an active role himself. A revamped “verification” system allows users to pay to amplify themselves, and engagements with Musk’s own tweets have more than doubled over the past year.
It’s hard to imagine he would be content in a role as a passive owner. Arne Slot would probably be on the next rocket to Mars (assuming Musk’s space fantasy ever comes to fruition) if he made a call Musk didn’t like.
Before you know it, Musk would be managing the team himself. If there’s one thing the UK has been reminded of in the last few weeks, it’s that the billionaire loves to talk about things he doesn’t understand, which would not bode well in the slightest.
There’s highly unlikely to be anything in the claims of Musk’s interest. But it had better stay that way: he is not welcome at Liverpool, and he never will be.
