Old Trafford being bulldozed will hurt – but Manchester United need a new stadium

I feel conflicted and optimistic, sad and excited about the news that Manchester United plan to build a new Old Trafford.

There are so many questions — the first being how it will be paid for. And, if it is built, as I suspect it will be, will it still be affordable to rank-and-file United fans, the bedrock of the club’s support, the people who are there for every game and not just the glamour ties?

I stand on Sir Matt Busby Way every month and I’ve seen a huge change in the demographic of those attending United games. But there are still plenty of what some might call ‘legacy fans’, and others might call ‘locals’. I don’t want them to be dynamically-priced out of any new home.

A 100,000 capacity is bold, but the demand is there.

United are big enough to go head-to-head with Barcelona and their 105,000-seater revamped Camp Nou. I remember taking a Barca fan to Old Trafford in 2008 and he was struck… by how small it was. He expected better. I expected better of him, but he was entitled to his view.

Issues such as the atmosphere are paramount. I don’t mind executive seats where a small number of fans provide a disproportionately high percentage of ticket revenues, but care must be taken and lessons learned. West Ham’s old home of Upton Park felt like a football ground; their new one, the London Stadium in Stratford, may be almost twice as big but, nah, it’s just not West Ham, with poor sightlines and acoustics.

The new Old Trafford will be built for football, and not the Olympic Games, as that stadium was.

People can be overly sentimental over stadia. Some still mourn the demise of the old Wembley and its fabled Twin Towers. But let’s get it right, the old Wembley was a dangerous tip of a ground and the new one is a huge improvement. New is not always better but Turin’s Delle Alpi, scene of United’s greatest game in 1999, had stands too far from the pitch. It was bulldozed and rebuilt.

The new Old Trafford stadium images look otherworldly, hardly different to the AI-generated ones clickbait sites have used in the last year to show what a new Old Trafford could look like.

But I like the fact it’s not just another bowl, a replica of something that already exists, and that a Mancunian architect, Sir Norman Foster, is involved. He’s not cheap and neither is the design.

The interior images are smart, and the idea of a tower that people go to visit for amazing views of the stadium and Manchester’s burgeoning skyline is enticing. Put the away fans up at the top and it still wouldn’t be as high as the away end at Newcastle’s St James’ Park.

Aesthetically, I’ll take some time to get used to it — how will they clean it? – but I don’t want to write it off on a first impression.

I wonder how Bayern Munich fans of the 1960s felt at seeing the designs for the Olympic Stadium which would become their home after the 1972 Games. The tent concept — with similarities to what is being proposed at Old Trafford — was later heralded and served the Bavarian clubs for three decades, but by the end it looked tired and was still impractical, since most of the seats remained uncovered.

Munich’s old Olympic Stadium has aesthetic similarities to United’s planned new ground (Christof Stache/AFP via Getty Images)

Time waits for nobody, but we also have to respect that people who scattered the ashes of loved ones at the current ground may feel strongly about the change. The pitch, or at least the exact space where the pitch is now, is where the magic has happened since its first game in 1910 (albeit not this season).

Something has to be done about Old Trafford, though. It remains a very good football ground and the lazy tropes about it falling down from people who’ve never been there are just that, but it is tired and awkward. The roof swoops too low, it’s lopsided. Even the fonts on the signage feel like 2008, in their prime when the team was.

It was the standout stadium in England 25 years ago; now, it is not. The Glazers didn’t invest in big-ticket redevelopments, they missed an opportunity.

For decades, I advocated for an expanded Old Trafford. I’d still be comfortable with that, but in recent years I’ve been more comfortable with the notion of a new stadium.

I love what Real Madrid have done with the Bernabeu, what Barcelona are doing with Camp Nou. I like what Bilbao’s Athletic Club and Tottenham Hotspur did: build completely new and much bigger new homes that overlap on the original sites. It means the fans can drink in the same pubs and bars and meet in the same places before games as they did at the old grounds.

Real Madrid showed how to renovate a stadium with their new-look Bernabeu (Denis Doyle/Getty Images)

I’ve watched United play in new super-stadia in the United States in recent pre-seasons and been blown away: Los Angeles, Las Vegas, New Jersey. They were all ‘Wow’ to look at, but then I saw the cost of car parking and drinks inside those venues. Northern England would not stomach the same rises, and nor does it need to.

Ticket prices were a point I made to Sir Jim Ratcliffe in November as forcibly as I could. United fans should be consulted at all stages about the new stadium.

Old Trafford would also stay in Old Trafford and the area around it would change. The site is almost perfect: there are already three Metro lines within a 10-minute walk of the stadium and one national rail line, which could be utilised again. There’s potential to travel on the canals — which helped power the industrial revolution, when Manchester was the world’s first industrial city.

Manchester needs new affordable homes, too, and the area around the stadium should be more vibrant. It’s dead most of the time. The local residents on the other side of the tracks in Gorse Hill were long forgotten about by the club. Bring them in and get them involved, since they’re the people who will be living cheek-by-jowl with the new stadium.

I’m not sure I’m mentally prepared to see Old Trafford start to get knocked down.

I saw it happen to the Stretford End in 1992, brick by brick. I’d visit three times a week with my girlfriend (she dumped me soon after) to see the Stretford Paddock, and then the Groundside reduced to dust. It was like seeing your youth being erased. I saw red roses laid in memoriam, but it always felt like it was in the name of progress. And it was. It needed modernising.

That was already over 30 years ago and times change.

Just one request.

I’ve done the United We Stand fanzine for 35 years. Our sellers have been getting wet for 35 years. Can they please have one square metre under that hard-to-clean 100,000-square metre canopy to stay dry?

(Top photo: Carl Recine/Getty Images)