The “Theatre of Dreams”, as Manchester United’s Old Trafford stadium was nicknamed by Bobby Charlton, has in recent years become something more like a theatre of recurring nightmares. Erik ten Hag’s sacking as manager on Monday (28 October) following a 2-1 defeat to West Ham the previous day is just the latest cycle of the doom-loop. Install a new manager (with declarations that “United are back”); pay inflated transfer fees on a confusing mish-mash of players; allow relations between club and players to deteriorate to the point of breakdown. All culminating in a traumatised fanbase baying for a valedictory “club statement” to put them and the manager out of their collective misery. The only real change is the name in the headline – Moyes, Van Gaal, Mourinho, Ragnick, Solskjær.
For a long time, United have flattered to deceive. Despite its global appeal and supporter base, the club remains bound to its northern roots. The endurance of Old Trafford, first opened in 1910; the club’s annual commemoration of the “Busby Babes”, the team of homegrown players coached by Matt Busby that fell tragic victims of the 1958 Munich air disaster; the presence of an academy player in every matchday squad for 87 years. These traditions have created imagined yet still very real feelings about what the club is – the sense there is a genuine “United way”. Busby’s claim that “Manchester is my heaven” – now spangled on banners across Old Trafford – can still just about obfuscate the fact that it is a global business worth an estimated $6.2bn (the world’s most valuable club).
It worked, for a while. That the club was able to produce its own local talents (the fabled “Class of ‘92” need no further romanticisation) and poach other domestic prodigies, created a virtuous cycle that allowed United to take advantage of the sporting globalisation of the 1990s and early 2000s, attracting players and fans from across the world and winning 13 domestic league titles, two European cups, and a Club World Cup during that time.
But since then, the game has moved on, and left United behind. The club’s refusal to adapt – masked initially by the pragmatism and talent of manager Sir Alex Ferguson until his retirement in 2013 – is now bearing its rotten fruit. The decline began with the sale of the club to the US-based Glazer family in 2005. Initially, the austerity the new owners would later impose was faint, even if replacing Cristiano Ronaldo (who was sold to Real Madrid for a then world record £80m in the summer of 2009) with Antonio Valencia, Gabriel Obertan and past-his-best Michael Owen was a key incubator for the “Glazers Out” movement that soon consumed the club. The signs soon became harder to ignore: dividend payouts of £166m and net debts of £651m since their takeover. Perhaps most illustrative is the material deterioration of Old Trafford and its leaky roof. In the stadium, as in the club soap opera, it doesn’t rain, it pours.
It’s an example of yet another great British institution being hollowed out. Though analogies between football and politics are often ham-fisted, it is not a stretch to compare the extractive management imposed on United by the Glazers to the damage done to the country under the Tories. Keir Starmer is the man tasked with fixing Britain. Billionaire entrepreneur Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who paid £1.3bn for a 27.7 per cent stake to wrest operational control of the club from the Glazers in February, hopes to restore United to its former glory. Both men are caught in a bind between radicalism and caution. Echoing the Prime Minister’s glum “things will get worse before they get better” spiel, Ratcliffe has warned that restoring United’s success is “not a light switch”. They both face the same problem. People want something, anything, resembling tangible progress now. They don’t want to hear promises of “a decade of national renewal” from Starmer, or the “time and… a bit of patience” Ratcliffe is calling for fans to have.
Once a new manager is found (ten Hag’s now former assistant and club legend, Ruud van Nistelrooy, will act as caretaker), Manchester United, like Britain, will be settling into life with a new leader. Gareth Southgate, perhaps the most Starmer-like of football managers in his shy conservatism, is among the bookies’ favourites. But football and politics only align in analogy, not reality, and what may be good for club is not necessarily for country, and vice-versa. It is exactly Southgate’s Starmer-like mundanity that means fans don’t believe he can stage a production in the theatre of dreams. Instead, it is a more modern club slogan that must capture the harsh realism of the modern United fan, suitably the club’s current X bio: “Hated. Adored. Never Ignored.”
[See also: How black Arsenal changed football]
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