Paris Saint-Germain president Nasser Al-Khelaifi has played a significant role in talks over the purchase of Manchester United by a group fronted by Qatari royal Sheikh Jassim.

United were put up for sale by their majority owners, the Glazer family, last November and the bidding contest to buy the Premier League club quickly came down to a two-horse race between Sheikh Jassim’s Nine Two Foundation and British billionaire, Sir Jim Ratcliffe.

Sheikh Jassim’s bid team initially consulted Al-Khelaifi for advice on United’s valuation as the Glazers indicated they wanted $8billion (£6.4bn) for the club.

But the PSG boss, one of the most powerful men in global football, has subsequently been contacted by the Glazers in an attempt to persuade Sheikh Jassim to increase his bid.

Al-Khelaifi, acting in an advisory role for Sheikh Jassim’s bid, has met the Glazers and Raine Group, the American bank that is conducting the sale on behalf of the Florida-based family, to discuss the proposed takeover.

Earlier this week, amid growing frustration at the slow pace of the process and a sense that the wind is blowing in Ratcliffe’s direction, Sheikh Jassim’s group submitted what it has described as a fifth and final bid in a significant sign they remain firmly in the race.

In the region of £5billion, this bid is for the entire club, including the shares owned by various minority shareholders, and would take United off the New York Stock Exchange and back into private ownership. This would mean United would no longer need to file quarterly accounts and hold regular calls with investors.

Ratcliffe’s bid values the entire club slightly higher but his proposal is for a staged takeover that would leave some or all of the six Glazer siblings as minority shareholders, before buying them out at a later date. Only then would he consider making an offer to the remaining shareholders.

This approach means Ratcliffe, the founder of the Ineos petrochemicals empire, would have a smaller initial outlay but the Glazers would receive more money from him than the Qatari proposal.

Sheikh Jassim himself has played no personal role in negotiations with Raine or the Glazers, leaving that to legal firm Macfarlanes and his financial advisors at the Bank of America.

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His representatives have repeatedly stressed that he is privately very wealthy and the Nine Two Foundation is independent of the Qatari state. But his lack of involvement in the process has led to concerns among the sellers about who is really driving the bid.

The second son of Qatar’s former prime minister, Sheikh Jassim joined the board of global bank Credit Suisse in 2010 aged just 28 and is the chairman of Qatar Islamic Bank. But until he was announced as the leader of a Qatari bid for United, nobody outside Gulf banking circles had heard of him and those who had described him as understated. In fact, his profile was so low when the bid was announced that many media outlets initially linked it to the wrong Sheikh Jassim and there are still only a handful of publicly-available photographs of him.

Al-Khelaifi, on the other hand, is the chairman of beIN Media Group, a state-owned entertainment and sport network based in Doha, and the European Club Association, the lobby group that represents the interests of the most successful clubs in Europe. The 49-year-old is also a former tennis professional who runs the Qatar Tennis Foundation and Premier Padel, the new professional circuit for the fast-growing squash/tennis hybrid.

Al-Khelaifi has become one of the most influential people in football (Photo: Mehdi Taamallah/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

His involvement in the United talks, even in an advisory capacity, has caused eyebrows to be raised elsewhere in the Premier League, with many club owners worried about the possibility of England’s biggest team becoming the latest to come under what is perceived by many to be effectively state ownership.

The rationale for these fears is that Al-Khelaifi is also the boss of Qatar Sports Investments, a subsidiary of the country’s sovereign wealth fund the Qatar Investment Authority. In fact, Al-Khelaifi is also a member of QIA’s board and was asked by the Qatari government to expand the Gulf state’s interests in global sport following their successful hosting of the 2022 World Cup. The move into padel tennis is an example of that, as is QSI’s recent purchase of a minority stake in Portuguese side Braga. But it is also widely known in league circles that Al-Khelaifi spoke to Tottenham Hotspur chairman Daniel Levy about a potential investment in north London club earlier this year.

As a result, a number of Premier League clubs fear Sheikh Jassim may simply be a face for the Qatari state if he were to become United’s owner and would want the source of any funds thoroughly investigated. As previously stated, Sheikh Jassim’s representatives strongly deny this would be the case, as do Al-Khelaifi’s, who are very clear his role is purely advisory.

Under Premier League rules, there is nothing to stop Al-Khelaifi, QSI or QIA from owning or co-owning United, though Al Khelaifi is quick to quash any speculation that that might be on the cards. European football’s governing body UEFA, however, has a rule that prohibits two clubs under the control of the same entity or person from playing in the same competition, which would mean both PSG and United could not play in the Champions League at the same time, for example, if they had common ownership. The question then for UEFA will then be who really owns and controls the clubs.

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All parties in the takeover talks, including the Glazers, have been aware of these concerns from the outset, which is one of the reasons why many observers have speculated that Ratcliffe’s bid would pose fewer regulatory concerns.

That said, Ratcliffe already owns French side OGC Nice, a team that has often played in European competitions in recent seasons and has the stated ambition of becoming a Champions League regular. If his bid for United is successful the 70-year-old will most likely have to sell Nice or reduce his stake in the club.

There is, however, a chance that neither he nor QSI would have to do anything, should they gain control of United, as UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin has made it clear that he is no longer certain the prohibition on clubs under common control playing in his tournaments is tenable in the multi-club ownership era.

Of course, according to Sheikh Jassim’s team, this is a moot point, as he only wants to own Manchester United and he will own it himself, not alongside Al-Khelaifi.

Al-Khelaifi, the Glazers, Raine and Sheikh Jassim all declined to comment.

(Photo: FRANCK FIFE/AFP via Getty Images)