Now we've got a takeover time and price, let's take interest in the 49ers again

The Athletic's David Ornstein and Phil Hay say the bit by bit investment that 49ers Enterprises, the money-not-football arm growing from throwing-not-kicking club San Francisco 49ers, has a structure to it that we didn't know about before. While negotiating to get their shareholding up to 37 per cent in January 2021 — since increased to 44 per cent in November — the investors, led by 49ers executive vice president Paraag Marathe and including a cast of tech founders, sport investors, property developers and who knows who but maybe even LL Cool J, sorted out how a full takeover can look. They have a deal to buy 100 per cent of Leeds United and the Elland Road stadium by January 2024 for a price between £400m and £475m. That includes what they've already paid, meaning they have to find another £200m or so.

It sounds like they're gonna, too, and they're not even going to wait until then. Hay 'n' Ornstein's (Hornstein?) sources say the total buy out 'is likely to come sooner'. They're seven per cent from majority control as it is, although I'd still be tempted to buy five per cent and enjoy being the 49ers with 49 per cent for a while. Andrea Radrizzani might retain a small stake when all is done, which makes sense because he seems like a sentimental fella, and also because his big stake has quadrupled in value so far so why wouldn't he.

Another detail of Hornstein's report stands out: that if Aser, Radrizzani's company for all his sports and media interests, buy another football club anywhere on planet earth before January 2024 then it voids the deal with 49ers Enterprises. Presumably if the total 49ers takeover is done before then Radrizzani can do what he likes, and it's not a non-compete clause ('don't buy Salernitana until 2024, give us a chance!'). But I'm also presuming 49ers Enterprises have listened to Radrizzani's plans for a network of European clubs and decided they'd rather just buy an unfettered Leeds United AFC, thank you very much for the fascinating concept all the same.

The headline is the sale price compared to the purchase price: Radrizzani said his initial investment in Leeds, to get the club off of Massimo Cellino and the stadium out of the British Virgin Islands, was £100m. That was summer 2017. To get the shell of a club Cellino handed over into the Premier League and agree to sell it for more than four times as much, within five years, is not a bad effort for a first timer. A framed portrait of Marcelo Bielsa should have pride of place, I think, on the new coffee table he'll buy with his profits, but it's a better look than Ken Bates glaring angrily at plans for the Lowfields motel that was going to make his fortune if only the sickpots and dissidents hadn't made it all so hard.