- Manchester United has presented plans for its new stadium of 100,000 capacity to
- Lord Norman Foster and Sir Jim Ratcliffe have explained the reduced deadline
- Listen now: Everything is starting! With the Premier League probably ensuring five places in the Champions League, are we rewarding mediocrity?
Thinking big or a Circus Big Top? The entrance door to an exciting future or an insult to the past?
With a Manchester United's size club, you will never please everyone. Not with a base of global fans like yours.
While Sir Jim Ratcliffe spoke in front of an audience at the Foster + Partners offices on Tuesday, he told the story of being one of the first western ones to cross the Mongol border from Gobi's desert after Covid.
“They didn't want to see our passports just talk about Manchester United,” he smiled.
Some fans were never going to be happy at the perspective of razing Old Trafford to the ground, preferring to see the remodeled place.
United is not the first club to face accusations of heresy for leaving his spiritual home, although for a few meters.
Manchester United presented plans to build a new and impressive Old Trafford under a vast 'umbrella'
The project has been headed by the minority owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe and INEOS, which are in charge of football operations
Manchester United will knock down the stadium they have called home for 115 years
Some will adopt the change, particularly if it means an increase of 25,000 in the capacity, the type of status and income that puts to United between the high rollers and a roof capable of keeping the rain out.
There will be others who prefer to see the money invested in a team that currently languishes in 14th place at the Premier League table.
But it has been clear for some time that a new stadium is Ratcliffe's preference, and his vision was exhibited throughout his glory in London on Tuesday.
Talking about a project of £ 2 billion seemed quite incongruous when they arrived only one day after looking at the lens of a television camera and predicted that United, one of the world's largest clubs, could have broken at Christmas.
It is difficult to imagine that he and the Glazer family seeing his crown jewel disappear through the ploughole without lifting a finger, but perhaps the prediction of the final judgment day was designed taking into account Tuesday's events.
Here was the opposite polar of oblivion. A Dream building and Ratcliffe's ambition for United.
It is still a conceptual design for now. Not the finished article. But Sir Jim is quite happy, they told us, so it would be a surprise if the stadium that opens some time around 2030 does not significantly resemble the designs we saw in London.
What happens if they don't like fans? There is still time for consultation, the answer came. There will only be. This is happening and it always was. Get it. The circus comes to the city.
