Manchester United’s new football owner, Sir Jim Ratcliffe, is dreaming of a 100,000- capacity venue for the Red Devils.
Ratcliffe is saying all the right things as he prepares to dive into work from the 2024/25 season.
The head of the INEOS Group has already made moves, bringing in a few important backroom staff that will help with the running and organisation of the club. He is also hands-on with building the club’s transfer strategy as he intends to fill the club with players who can pull crowds and deliver the goals that will bring trophies.
Speaking with journalists recently, Sir Ratcliffe talked about how Old Trafford no longer befits the status of Manchester United in football. He is looking to Spanish giants Real Madrid and Barcelona for inspiration to give United a ground that will not only be the biggest in English football, but can rival the Camp Nou and the Santiago Bernabeu.
“Manchester United are arguably the greatest club in the world”, Ratcliffe told the Geraint Thomas Cycling Club podcast. “Definitely in the top three clubs in the world. They are probably the biggest sports brand worldwide. It’s a bit like Coca-Cola – anywhere you go in the world, they’ve heard of Manchester United.”
“It needs to have a stadium that is befitting the club and the brand. That might have been the case 20 years ago, but it isn’t today. [Old Trafford] is a little bit tired.”
“If you look at what Real Madrid are doing with the Bernabeu and Barcelona with the Nou Camp, the Bernabeu is fabulous. It’s like a cauldron of noise. The Nou Camp is enormous and they are spending a lot of money revamping it.”
“You look at the Premier League, we don’t have anything that compares. And yet the Premier League is several times bigger than the Spanish league in terms of size, scale and importance today. That’s where all the money is with TV. The Premier League needs to have some grounds which are the equal of our European competitors.”
“We can refurbish the ground and have a fantastic stadium, that will take about a billion to do that, and the club can shoulder that burden. But we have got this opportunity to build a new ground if we choose to. We’ve got enough space to build a completely new ground.”
“If we build a completely new ground, it would be state of the art, world-class, [have a capacity of] 90,000 or even 100,000.”
