Inside Donald Trump’s audacious plan to buy Rangers and restore them to former glory
Donald Trump seriously considered buying Rangers – only to back out once he realised the scale of the club’s financial crisis.
Back in 2012, Rangers were desperate for a buyer amid their fiscal implosion which resulted in administration, liquidation and demotion to the fourth tier. Numerous well-known figures were linked with saving the ailing Ibrox club.
They included a certain Donald J Trump, who is potentially days away from becoming the most powerful man in the world for a second time as he stands as the Republican candidate in the US election.
Trump’s links to Scotland are well known through his Ross-shire-born mother Mary Anne MacLeod. Back in 2012, he was in the process of trying to establish his first Scottish golf course near Aberdeen. Trump had a modicum of experience with sports entities after a brief spell running American football franchise the New Jersey Generals, who played in the short-lived US Football League in the mid-1980s.
He took a “serious” look at Rangers’ situation with a view to bailing out the club. Given his penchant for attaching his surname to his businesses, it’s not beyond the realms of plausibility that Rangers’ home could have been renamed. Trump Ibrox, anyone?
However, despite his immense wealth and trumped-up (pun intended) ties to the country, the Gers’ dire financial position proved to be a major turnoff. Speaking to the Press and Journal at the time, a Trump source said: “We looked seriously and walked away.
It just did not make sense to us, although they are a great club. We hope someone steps in and builds the team again.”
In 2015, Trump, who was on the campaign trail ahead of his first term as US president, was linked with buying Colombian giants Atletico Nacional, a club with an infamous history due to its links with drug lord Pablo Escobar. Again, the interest came to nothing as he focused on his controversial political career.
Trump, presumably, isn’t paying too much attention to Rangers’ current travails, with the club operating without a permanent chairman, chief executive and head of football operations while last week it was revealed they made a net loss of £17.2million last season.
Be the first to comment