Manchester United are set to announce grand plans to build a new world-class stadium on the adjacent land to Old Trafford and demolish their iconic 115-year home. Sir Jim Ratcliffe has been assessing options since his February 2024 arrival as he looks to transform United into a profitable club again, and a new build is believed to be the INEOS kingpin’s chosen route.
Last year, a designated task force featuring members like the Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, and club legend and businessman Gary Neville formed to explore the options. It has since provided a report on the feasibility of building a state-of-the-art football stadium or redeveloping Old Trafford. The cost of replacing ‘The Theatre of Dreams’ with a new arena has been estimated at £2billion – and how United intend to fund the project remains unclear.
However, that is the option the club are set to take. According to The Athletic, United are expected to announce on Tuesday that they will pursue a stunning 100,000-capacity stadium.
“It’s definitely deliverable,” Ratcliffe told Neville during an in-depth interview on The Overlap published on Monday.
“If you take the view it’s the greatest club in the world; then it should be a stadium befitting the greatest club in the world and also a stadium that befits the greatest league in the world because the Premier League is the greatest league in the world.”
The Red Devils will likely unveil designs by world-renowned architect Norman Foster of Foster + Partners and explain the sensitive decision to move on from Old Trafford.
Neville claimed that he had seen the plans and described them as “incredible”, while Ratcliffe suggested they would want to move within the next six years.
“I won’t say much more, but Norman Foster, who also is a Mancunian and is the world’s greatest architect in my view, really has created the most iconic — well, you’ve seen it — the most iconic stadium, incredible,” Ratcliffe said.
“It would be marvellous if Manchester United could go down that road and, in five years’ time or six years’ time, have that stadium.”
A new stadium would be the nucleus of the wider regeneration of the Trafford Wharfside area, which Chancellor Rachel Reeves has publicly backed.
Ratcliffe insists that the United won’t need government money to fund the project but admitted that the club couldn’t afford to contribute to the required improved infrastructure in the Trafford Wharfside area.
He added: “The only basis upon which we can build a new one is if it is part of this government regeneration scheme for south Manchester.
“Because we can’t afford to regenerate southern Manchester, that’s too big a bill for the club.
“We can build a stadium. We don’t need any government funding for that stadium, but it has to be the underpin for the regeneration.”
