It’s not known as the Theatre of Dreams for nothing.
own through the decades, millions of starry-eyed youngsters have grown up with dreams of gracing one of the world’s most iconic football stages, of emulating the likes of Johnny Carey, Duncan Edwards, George Best, Eric Cantona, Cristiano Ronaldo or Bobby Charlton.
It was Sir Bobby who coined that ‘Theatre of Dreams’ sobriquet for Old Trafford back in 1987, and some cynics might suggest that that was also the last time the place saw a lick of paint.
Ha ha, but not true.
Yes, the paint may be peeling off the girders above the stands, but a lot of work has been done on the 113-year-old stadium since the late 1980s.
The West Stand — better known of course as the Stretford End — was rebuilt in 1992 and expanded eight years later, while the North Stand (now the Sir Alex Ferguson) was completed in 1995 and is still the UK’s largest single stand.
The East Stand — us older United devotees prefer to call it the Scoreboard End — was completed in 2000.
But, save for a welcome recent revamp of the disabled section, little of substance has been done since the ‘quadrants’ opened in 2005 — just before the Glazer family bought the club.
In the meantime, bitter rivals Liverpool have redeveloped two sides of Anfield while nouveau riche neighbours Manchester City, as well as Arsenal, Spurs and West Ham, have moved into brand new stadiums.
Tottenham’s new home is, arguably, the best in the world — not bad for a club who last won a top-flight title when our own Danny Blanchflower was the captain, and when United’s 63-year-old interim manager Ralph Rangnick was still in nappies.
Moreover, although the 20-times English champions are supposedly vying with Real Madrid and Barcelona for the mantle of ‘biggest club in the world’, both the Spanish giants are in the process of major stadium rebuilds, including retractable roofs, which will increase their capacities to 85,000 and 105,000 respectively.
United’s roof doesn’t move but it fairly leaks, most notably in the Sir Bobby Charlton/South Stand — the one you never see on telly — which hails from the nascent 1909 days and was once the ‘main’ stand but is now the smallest.
And, despite being England’s most successful club and (arguably) the biggest in world football, United don’t have a big screen — a crucial element in these days of VAR disputes and instantly demanded replays — or proper stadium wifi.
Old Trafford remains an impressive stadium, and a mecca for the hundreds of faithful fans from Northern Ireland who regularly visit but, relatively speaking, it’s unfit for purpose and analogous of the Red Devils first team slipping down the league table.
Now, finally, United’s controversial American owners have realised they have to do something about this crumbling citadel.
The most radical plan under consideration would be demolishing Old Trafford and rebuilding it on an adjacent plot of land owned by the club, similar to what Arsenal did in the Noughties.
United traditionalists are horrified by this idea; as one told me recently “you don’t buy a new house just because your roof is leaking, you just repair the roof” .
Another argued that ‘OT’ should be classed as a heritage site, and that razing it to the ground would amount to an act of “treason”, and that changing the stadium would take away the club’s “soul”.
The most favoured option appears to be rebuilding the Sir Bobby Charlton Stand, progress for which has hitherto been hindered by the Manchester-to-Liverpool railway line, a mere 15 metres away.
Computerised construction technology, however, now exists and architects have a design for a new stand which can be built up and over the railway line; a complex engineering challenge indeed, but it would ultimately increase Old Trafford’s capacity from 74,000 to 88,000.
That’s just 2,000 less than a proposed ‘New Old Trafford’.
It would also bring a welcome ‘symmetry’ to the UK’s largest club stadium — that under-developed stand’s roof is far too low — and solve a lot of the Sir Bobby Charlton Stand issues which this writer, for one, has regularly encountered.
Apart from the leaky roof — and remember, it rains a lot in Manchester — the seats lack the sort of legroom prevalent in other ‘modern’ stadiums and, if you go for refreshments at half time, you’ll invariably miss the start of the second half.
Let’s not go there with the rat infestation...
United’s team sucks at the moment but their current on-the-field issues don’t translate into empty seats, home games invariably sell out and there’s always a long waiting list for season tickets and the 9,000 ‘corporate’ seats for what former club captain Roy Keane once witheringly labelled the “prawn sandwich brigade”.
It has been estimated that only 2% of the club’s massive global fan base have ever visited Old Trafford.
Whatever new plan is settled upon, it will ultimately increase the capacity but, for me, rebuilding one of the four stands is still not enough to drag the place into the 21st century.
The Theatre of Dreams badly needs a new roof, which was built swooping downwards to allow Manchester’s sunshine(!) to reach the pitch.
Since then, however, effective LED ‘grass grow’ lamps have been invented.
The current roof also ruins the stadium’s acoustics; the Stretford End may well be in full voice, but try hearing those guys from the Scoreboard End, a little over 100 yards away.
Add the price of the new roof to the rebuilt Sir Bobby Charlton Stand, allow for the inevitable ‘unseen costs’ that construction always brings and you’re getting uncomfortably close to the estimated cost of a new stadium being built next door — something like £1.1bn.
Mind you, that’s roughly the amount United have spent on under-performing players since they last won the Premier League nine years ago...
