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MAN UNITED….Now that you, the American taxpayer, more or less own insurance giant AIG, it turns out that you, the American taxpayer, are also the principal sponsor of Manchester United, thanks to a four-year, $100 million sponsorship deal signed in 2006. So this got me curious: how is our soccer football team doing?

Answer: not well. After winning the Premier League and the European Championship last year, they’ve started slowly this season with a loss to Liverpool, a win over Portsmouth, and a tie with Newcastle. Net result: 14th place. Next up is first place Chelsea on the 21st.

British readers should feel free to fill in details in comments. What do all those columns mean in the league table? What do the dotted lines mean on the BBC version of the table? I mean, if we’re sponsoring these blokes, I suppose we ought to know something about them.

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BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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