Man Utd’s 100,000-seater stadium plans, could 11 PL teams get into Europe?

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Hello! A new home for Manchester United — but Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s not for moving.

Coming up:

💸 Mega United stadium blueprint

🗣️ Ratcliffe’s outspoken interviews

🛒 How PSG saw transfer sense

😴 Marco Reus caught napping

Stadium sighter: Man Utd want to build £2bn 100,000-seat arena

A lively news line from Manchester United to kick us off: the club have committed to building a new 100,000-capacity stadium as part of wider plans to regenerate the Old Trafford area.

We’re very light on detail still, with no guidance on how the expensive project — potentially a £2billion ($2.6bn) build — will be paid for, but watch this space. Money notwithstanding, there’s no denying United’s current ground is dropping to bits — and you’ll find substantial support within their fanbase for an entirely new arena, rather than an upgrade of the existing Old Trafford.

Some positive steps forward are overdue. It has been said in these parts (more than once) that the only thing INEOS has shown a talent for at United is imposing drastic cuts, though we’re maybe doing Sir Jim Ratcliffe a disservice — because he’s not bad at shouting his mouth off either.

Yesterday brought a fresh round of interviews with him, conducted by several different outlets (The Athletic wasn’t invited to the sessions). They took place a day after protests against United’s majority shareholder, the Glazer family. As usual, Ratcliffe had plenty to say for himself when he spoke to the BBC, The Times and others:

🗣️ On the players: “Some are not good enough and some probably are overpaid, but moulding the squad will take time.”

🗣️ On the cutbacks at Old Trafford: “The simple answer is the club runs out of money at Christmas if we don’t do those things.”

🗣️ On head coach Ruben Amorim: “I really, really like Ruben. He’s a very thoughtful guy. Every time I go to the training ground, I speak to Ruben. I sit down and tell him where it’s going wrong and he tells me to f*** off.”

🗣️ On dispensing with Sir Alex Ferguson as a club ambassador: “I sat down with Alex and said, ‘Honestly, we can’t really afford to continue to pay you £2m a year’. It was very grown-up. Maybe a little bit grumpy.”

Our writers did some fact-checking of Ratcliffe’s comments and frankly, they weren’t having his claim that United could have gone bust by Christmas. But the more you hear from him, the less he sounds like a man who rules by committee. His way or the highway.

🎙️ We spent the best part of an hour on The Athletic FC Podcast yesterday working out how (or if) Amorim can get United on the straight and narrow. I guess it helps that Ratcliffe has faith in him. Download free from Apple and Spotify.

News round-up

• Mauricio Pochettino’s USMNT will warm up for the 2025 Gold Cup with friendlies against Turkey and Switzerland. The Gold Cup itself starts on June 14, with Mexico defending the title.
• Manchester City Women’s head coach Gareth Taylor has been sacked, five days before they play Chelsea in the League Cup final. It’s the end of a four-and-a-half-year reign.
• If the German Bundesliga title race wasn’t over before, it might be now. Second-placed Bayer Leverkusen are eight points behind Bayern Munich and to compound the deficit, they’ve lost hot playmaker Florian Wirtz to an ankle ligament injury.
• Nottingham Forest have failed to overturn a £750,000 fine for a social media post attacking Premier League referee Stuart Attwell last season. An appeal board upheld the punishment, saying Forest’s behaviour was “wholly unprecedented”.
• Arsenal are investigating after inappropriate remarks were made by a member of the crowd towards Liverpool Women’s Taylor Hinds during an FA Cup tie at the weekend. The alleged perpetrator was ejected from the ground.

Expanding Euro spots? Premier League could get 11 places next season – but at what cost?

The 1991-92 season was the last before the Premier League entered the food chain and set about eating it. In England, four clubs qualified for Europe: one for the rebranded Champions League, two for the UEFA Cup (later to become the Europa League) and one for the now-defunct European Cup Winners’ Cup.

Those tournaments were exclusive playgrounds for a select few teams, and there is no better way of explaining football’s expanding waistline than showing how 11 Premier League sides could find a way into European competitions next season. It’s a gold rush where the target is harder to miss than hit.

Granted, the chances of it happening are slim. Matt Woosnam has been crunching the numbers. For instance, Chelsea would have to win the Conference League and finish eighth domestically. Aston Villa would have to win the Champions League. What I’m trying to say is don’t bet the mortgage on it — but believe that Crystal Palace in 11th position are not out of the running for their first foray into Europe (there is an example of how it could happen, below).

Happy days, except there’s a contradiction behind the ‘all aboard’ culture. More and more football is stretching players to their physical limit and beyond. A sport that can’t withstand much more pressure on its fixture list is watching it pile on. Clubs’ methods of coping with it are the subject of this article by Jordan Campbell, in which one Premier League consultant tells it like it is: “We’re treating (players) like entertainers, not performers.”

‘It’s too much’

Some of the data uncovered by Jordan is remarkable. A consensus among specialists says footballers should not play more than 55 matches a season but analysis suggests a third are exceeding that figure. Arsenal contested 21 fixtures in 75 days between November and early February, a run without any downtime.

Frank Lampard was a young starter in his day, debuting at 17 back in 1996. He made more than 1,000 appearances in his career, but Jude Bellingham at Real Madrid is projected to clear Lampard’s total by more than 200. Long story short: footballers at the very top are being completely flogged.

These quotes from experts spoken to by Jordan are worth repeating:

🗣️ “If you’re an African player at a top English club, you have 38 league games, two domestic cups, Champions League, the Club World Cup, the Africa Cup of Nations (at the end of 2025) and the World Cup next summer. It’s too much.”

🗣️ “It’s not about peak performance now. It’s just about getting it done however you can, due to the game schedule.”

🗣️ “Academies are better and clubs train better, but the human body hasn’t evolved in that time to cope.”

That final observation might be the most pertinent. It poses a question which the game’s administrators resolutely shut out of their heads. What if we reach a day when the human body no longer can?

Shopping in Paris: Neves and Kvaratskhelia show a smart change in strategy

Paris Saint-Germain have a history of opportunism with transfers. They met Neymar’s extortionate release clause at Barcelona, because they could. They dug deep for Lionel Messi when he appeared on the market overnight. They got into bed with Zlatan Ibrahimovic because, well, who wouldn’t?

Marquee names, of course, but none of those deals required brains or imagination. They’re the signings people make on a game console. But PSG (who are at Anfield for the second leg of their Champions League scrap with Liverpool later) have started to operate like a proper club should: opportunistic still, but flush with creativity and some thought about the longer game.

Recruited last summer, midfielder Joao Neves, 20, has been a revelation, and a snip at £58.7m ($75.6m) from Benfica. Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, 24, is everybody’s cup of tea but PSG were sharp in agreeing terms with Napoli in January — and the point is that he actually fits.

Whether PSG willingly abandoned the old dream-team vision or whether finance forced their hand is for them to know. But they’re arguably better for it, and easier to admire and appreciate too.

Catch a match

(Kick-offs 4pm ET/8pm UK time and Paramount+/TNT Sports unless stated)

Champions League last 16, second legs: Barcelona (1) vs Benfica (0), 1.45pm/5.45pm; Bayer Leverkusen (0) vs Bayern Munich (3); Inter (2) vs Feyenoord (0) — CBS, Paramount+, Fubo/TNT Sports; Liverpool (1) vs Paris Saint-Germain (0) — Paramount+/Amazon Prime.

Around TAFC

Sky Sports

And finally…

Having dug out LAFC for punting on Olivier Giroud, it’s only right to swing over to the city’s other MLS neighbourhood and highlight a dereliction of duty by Los Angeles Galaxy’s Marco Reus.

Reus, it should be said, gets pass marks at Galaxy. He went all the way to the MLS Cup with them last season. But this abomination above (No 18, frozen at the back post during a 3-0 defeat to St Louis City over the weekend) is the worst piece of marking since FIFA awarded Saudi Arabia the highest tournament evaluation in World Cup history.

Come on pal… wakey, wakey.