Old Trafford is England’s biggest club stadium yet it was left off the list of venues to stage Euro 2028 games recently.
With the outcome of Manchester United’s strategic review close to completion but still ongoing, United could not provide guarantees that there would be no construction around the time of the tournament. People such as myself would like to think Old Trafford won’t be the same — bar minor cosmetic changes — five years from now, but it could be.
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There was a little bit of talk about the stadium at a recent staff meeting chaired by Richard Arnold. There are plans to fix the leaky roof, which has begun to blister with age, for example, but we don’t know more about big ticket changes. In April 2022, United appointed Populous and Legends International as master planners and consultants for Old Trafford’s redevelopment/reconstruction, with KSS working on a plan for the Carrington training ground, viewed by the club as a separate project. But everything has been put on hold while the ownership of the club is up in the air.
The Old Trafford roof still has a leak. #MUFC [@KyleHall1996] pic.twitter.com/AWjxttUS5u
— mufcmpb (@mufcMPB) October 1, 2023
Sir Jim Ratcliffe, the boss of petrochemicals giant INEOS, is set to purchase 25 per cent of Manchester United from the Glazer family. Sorting out the stadium has been featured as part of the proposals. Ratcliffe knows it’s an issue among fans since the Glazers’ track record with Old Trafford is not an impressive one, but even they know the stadium needs serious investment.
But what would my dream Old Trafford look like? I’ve watched United all over the place, including in 45 countries around the world. The standard of stadiums varies tremendously. I’ve stood on a mud slope at Halifax in 1990. That crowd of 7,500 was one of the smallest I’ve seen United play a competitive game in front of. I’ve been in an away end at QPR where the view was so bad the hosts printed ‘DIABOLICAL VIEW’ on the ticket stub.
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I’ve seen plenty of girders obstructing views, though that was probably a good thing given how bad United were in Sir Alex Ferguson’s early years. I’ve stood on uncovered, obstructed terraces so poor you could barely watch the game. Nottingham Forest’s Bridgford End (pre-1994) had the triple whammy of a shallow rake, no cover and a huge floodlight pylon to mess up your view. Everton’s Park End terrace was bafflingly flat and so low you needed a periscope. Southampton was a series of low, uncovered pens with a big fence to obscure the view after a five-hour journey from Manchester.
There were some truly horrific away ends in England before the Taylor Report kicked in following the Hillsborough disaster. Manchester City’s away end in the Platt Lane stand featured aged wooden benches, though that ground did have a pitch wider than the mouth of the Amazon and floodlights so tall they could be seen from Stockport. At Chelsea, you were far from the pitch, just as you are on the upper tier at West Ham now.
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Goodison Park and Kenilworth Road aside, stadiums are almost unrecognisable now. I visited Real Madrid’s Bernabeu two weeks ago. To me, it was the best football stadium in the world before the huge redevelopment that has taken place. Now it’s even better.
Was I jealous? Absolutely. They’ve kept the sheer sides, added another tier on one side to push the capacity to 85,000, raised the roofline and added a retractable roof. There’s so much more legroom than at Old Trafford and the whole of the exterior is clad in striking, curved, stainless steel lamellas, making it look as much like Bilbao’s stunning Guggenheim as a football stadium.
Madrid’s home can now be used 365 days a year to stage whatever is needed, from concerts to football matches.
By expanding the footprint, there’s a lot more space at the new Bernabeu. It is a pleasant place to go for a drink or a meal. Old Trafford is cramped in comparison, many of the areas under the stand are notably tired when set against what you find in the newest stadiums. I loved being beneath K-Stand in the 90s, where the whole section would be bouncing to ‘K-Stand’s barmy army’ at half-time. Old Trafford may have the cheapest beer in the league, but the world has changed. When it comes to their stadium, Madrid have left United behind.
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A redeveloped or even rebuilt Old Trafford (I prefer the former idea, many don’t) should be the following: huge. Get as close to 100,000 capacity as possible. There is a demand for it. Add more normal seats, more executive seats (and use them to offset cheaper seats) and more disabled facilities, though they have been much improved already. There’s tension now among fans because so many can’t get tickets (unless they support Galatasaray) after a post-Covid surge in demand, combined with another wave of interest when Cristiano Ronaldo returned. Every game now sells out.
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The Glazers should have continued to develop Old Trafford, just as it was expanded four times from holding 44,000 in 1994 to 76,000 12 years later. It all stopped with the Glazers. Granted, the last bit, the Main Stand side, is the most complicated, but the point remains. Invest. The Class of 92 saw the potential in building a hotel by Old Trafford. Why didn’t Manchester United?
So, here’s a wish list.
Make the entire Stretford End safe standing, our own red wall led by the Red Army. United were at the forefront of pushing safe standing and Old Trafford now boasts it in four different sections. It works.
It’s encouraging that the club are expanding general-admission seats into an executive area of the Stretford End for next season. This should be the start. The Stretford End was one of the most famous terraces in world football, with a well-deserved reputation for noise in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s. Keep the tickets cheap in there, encourage younger fans to go in there and you could have a 15,000-capacity end to rival the best.
Old Trafford should primarily be redeveloped to raise the capacity, but the aesthetics and acoustics should be improved. A new exterior or even a new roof (very expensive) would help, since the current roof sweeps so low as to encase a gloomy interior.
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Better acoustics means the sound would travel better, yet I feel conflicted writing that given some of the best atmospheres in United’s history involved open-air terraces (Galatasaray 1993 and 1994, Fenerbahce ’96 and Besiktas in 2010).
The tiny scoreboards at Old Trafford pale in comparison with what you find elsewhere. They can’t replay goals or show what’s going on with VAR. The reality is that fans inside the stadium are more in the dark about decisions than those watching on a screen. This should change with a new stadium, though maybe not as big as the new one at Madrid, which is the size of Stretford.
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The best new stadiums I’ve seen United play in were at Tottenham Hotspur and in Las Vegas in July. United regularly visit huge venues during pre-season that are an upgrade on Old Trafford, even if they don’t have the name or the history. It’s to United’s credit they haven’t sold the name to a sponsor.
There’s huge potential in the area around Old Trafford, too. Transport-wise, it is already well served by three Metrolink tram lines (Old Trafford also has its own rail station, though it’s now unused) and multiple dual carriageways. You can even get to Old Trafford by boat (and some do) along the Bridgewater Canal, built in 1761. The Manchester Ship Canal (Manchester was a port until 1982 and there were direct weekly Manchester Liner ships to Montreal, the ships coloured red, white and black, naturally) and Salford Quays is less than 200 metres away. After decades of post-industrial decay in Trafford Park, the world’s first planned industrial estate, the area has boomed with the construction of apartments and offices, including the BBC.
Central Manchester’s skyline has been transformed with skyscrapers and new towers are creeping west towards Old Trafford and Salford Quays. The area needs new housing and it’s a desirable area with much potential. Residents of the long-established Gorse Hill (I used to be one) next to the ground deserve better from United; improved communication and a better connection to the giant on their doorstep. This did improve last year with the club offering Old Trafford as a warm space for the local community.
The area around Old Trafford isn’t necessarily United’s responsibility, but then neither was the area around Manchester City’s home on the opposite side of Manchester and they are investing heavily — a new indoor arena opening in April 2024 will be the UK’s biggest, with room for 23,500.
Actions will speak louder than any words and we’ve seen too little of it with the Glazers in charge. That has to change because others are playing catch-up. In 2006, Old Trafford boasted 24,000 more seats than the second-biggest Premier League ground, St James’ Park. Now, the homes of West Ham, Spurs and Arsenal all hold more than 60,000. Liverpool and Manchester City’s stadiums soon will as well, while Newcastle United plan to expand again. It’s difficult but not inconceivable that one of these could go even bigger than Old Trafford within a decade. And what a shame that would be.
Reports of its demise have been exaggerated and Old Trafford remains a very good football stadium. It is what it says on the tin — old — and with that comes restriction of space. That affects everything — from the size of the bars, the kitchens, the lounges (tents have been erected this season outside the stadium for executive fans) and media facilities. The big new stadiums have press auditoriums for 400. Old Trafford, home of the club which attracts the most media interest, holds 97.
Madrid had similar problems but expanded outwards and improved everything in the process. United could — and should — do the same on three sides while building over the Main Stand and its corners to give that great cavity of redness a fitting capacity.
