MANCHESTER UNITED minority owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe was spotted watching his other club Nice despite some controversial statements he made recently.
Ratcliffe, 72, and his Ineos team took over United in 2024 and gained control over sporting operations after already owning the French club as well as Lausanne-Sport.
Sir Jim has been very present at Man Utd as he recently flew in to hold showdown talks with manager Ruben Amorim after a rocky start to the season.
However, the British billionaire hasn’t been a regular at one of his other clubs Nice.
Nevertheless, Ratcliffe made an exception on Wednesday as he watched the Ligue 1 outfit’s 2-1 loss to Roma in the Europa League from the stands of the Allianz Riviera.
The owner cut a frustrated figure when the cameras panned to the VIP section.
This comes after the Ineos chief landed himself in hot water earlier this year by criticising Nice and French football.
Ratcliffe recently said: “I don’t particularly enjoy going to watch Nice because there are some good players, but the level of football is not high enough for me to get excited.”
That led to a defiant response from Nice manager Franck Haise.
Haise responded: “The article that [the comments] appeared in was a lot more complete than that. But he hasn’t seen a Nice match this season.
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“He’s speaking a bit more about what he saw at another time. With the people who are here at the club, we are here to make the club progress in order to be even better.
“It’s not that serious. We can be annoyed, that’s obvious. But is it really worth staying annoyed for a long time?
“We have got to keep working, enjoying ourselves and we have got to be doing the best possible. We have to move on and continue on our path.”
Nevertheless, Nice have had some success in recent years as they finished fourth in the league last season and made it to the quarter-finals of the Conference League in 2024.
And Ratcliffe did admit that he made “some really stupid decisions” at his French team as well as Lausanne, whom he bought in 2019 and 2017 respectively.
Sir Jim said last year: “We’ve made some really stupid decisions in both those clubs.
“There are a lot of organisations in the world where, if you make a mistake, you get shot, so nobody ever puts their head above the parapet.
“But at INEOS, we don’t mind people making mistakes – but please don’t make it a second time.
“So with that, we’re much less than sympathetic when they make the same mistake twice.
“We have made mistakes in football, so I’m really pleased that we made those mistakes before we arrived here at Manchester United.
“If we hadn’t, this would be a much tougher job for us. Because it is huge and it’s very exposed.”
