UK Soccer team

Diddy is the latest very rich person to think that buying an English football team is a quaint and charming idea. But his plan to buy London team Crystal Palace for $360m will lead to disaster. And here's why.

• Sneering at Americans is almost a pastime in England. Whatever they tell you when they come to tourist around New York or Florida, many English people see Americans as crass, fat idiots with plastic souls. There is some financial justification for the huge backlash against the Glazer family, who own Manchester United (and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers). But the vehement hatred is based firmly in the fact that the Glazers are American and it's felt that they don't get football. Bespoke tailored, champagne-quaffing, perfume-having P Diddy does not exactly exude a working class love for the game either. He'd be ousted as soon as they lost two matches in succession.
• English football fans are, in many cases, illiterate racist morons. Diddy is black. They do not like black people — even prominent black players have racist abuse (and occasionally bananas) hurled at them from the stands. With a wealth of song material at their disposal, it would be a matter of minutes before some disgusting, appalling and amusingly-phrased racist chant worked its way across the stadium. Diddy does not strike us as someone who would take this lightly. And warring with your fans, however wrong they are, is not a wise move for the owner of a football team.
• Diddy is used to getting his own way. Celebrity football team owners sometimes forget where they are and make dreadful faux-pas in such circumstances — here's English TV chef Delia Smith, who owns part of Norwich City FC giving an, um, exuberant half-time speech to illustrate the dangers. Add Courvoisier and a rapper, and you have a potentially explosive YouTube combination.

Just buy a gigantic yacht, P (if indeed we can call you P).

UPDATE: Lots of Crystal Palace fans are upset at the above characterizations. Here's the most literate of their emails: