There’s a quote, often attributed to Manchester United legend Eric Cantona: “You can change your wife, your politics, your religion, but never, never can you change your football team.” Fans of FC United of Manchester are an exception to that rule. They were so disillusioned by the trajectory of their beloved Manchester United that they formed a new one in their own image, and they brought Cantona with them.
Following the Glazer family’s leveraged takeover at Old Trafford in 2005, a group of fans already falling out of love with the heavily commercialized realities of the modern game, decided that enough was enough. The Glazers’ buyout, which would dump debt onto the club and usher in a period of misery both on and off the pitch, was the final straw.
The day after the Glazers’ arrival, discontented supporters held a meeting in a curry house. A week later, they convened at the city’s Methodist Hall, and then finally the 3,500-capacity Apollo, before deciding to go it alone. On June 14, FC United of Manchester was officially born when the club was legally incorporated. The guiding principles were laid down: This would be a fan-owned club, all members could join and have an equal say in decisions, and there would be no “outright commercialism.”
Founder member Adrian Seddon told ESPN, “There was growing discontent at the way football was moving, but the Glazer takeover was the Big Bang.”
FC United wasted no time. By July 16 they were playing their first match, a friendly against local side Leigh RMI, and in August they entered the league system in the North-West Counties League. Starting from scratch, the fledgling club needed to borrow a ground and received support from Bury FC, which allowed them to play at Gigg Lane.
Today, FC United have over 2,000 members including former Old Trafford captain Cantona, who joined in April this year along with his whole family. All members pay £25 per year, and all have one vote on major issues from kit designs (it is non-negotiable that it must be red) to ticket prices. A board is voted in and chooses a chair. There’s an absolute determination that everything at the club must be democratic and transparent, two words that stand in opposition to the reality at Manchester United, where minority owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe has presided over hundreds of staff redundancies amid a slew of cutbacks since taking over control of football operations in February, 2024.
In some ways, FC United have broken free of the 20-time Premier League champions, but the two will always be inextricably linked. The songs you hear at FC United games are a mix of the old Manchester United chants and new ones. Some fans still attend Old Trafford on occasion while others, determined not to put a penny into the Glazers’ pockets, have gone cold turkey. But, universally, FC United fans retain their affection for Manchester United. That affection has been tested more than ever this season, with the club slumping to its lowest-ever Premier League finish.
In the early days of the club, FC United was branded as traitors by some who painted the breakaway as an anti-United movement. But these days, there’s very little tension. The 1958 protest group — one of the most vocal sources of dissent toward the Old Trafford ownership — recently joined forces with FC United for an anti-Glazer demonstration.
“Manchester United is as important as ever to us,” board member Paul Hurst told ESPN. “We have forged our own path, but our stadium is a shrine to Manchester United. We have our FC United history, but also our shared history.”
“It was a special moment,” FC United captain Charlie Ennis told ESPN. “As a United fan since I was young, this is the closest thing to actually playing for Manchester United. But even most Premier League players don’t get the opportunity to lead their team out at San Siro.”
The biggest pride and joy of FC United is ownership of Broadhurst Park — the UK’s first new ground to be built by a supporter-owned football club — which they have called home since May 2015. The process was torturous. After a site in Newton Heath, Manchester United’s spiritual home, they eventually put down roots in Moston, closer to Manchester City‘s Etihad stadium. While having a fixed abode was a cause for celebration, the terms of the deal with council were far from ideal, so much so that the board members who did the deal resigned soon after.
“There are so many legacy issues around the stadium,” Baker said. “When I joined the board in 2016, half the job was firefighting the terms of the lease. We couldn’t have a car boot sale, we couldn’t host a concert, initially we couldn’t even play home games on the same day as Manchester City.”
They successfully fought against the restriction on 3 p.m. Saturday kickoffs but, with the loan taken on the stadium to Manchester City Council is in excess of £1 million, the payments are a constant financial pressure on the club. Each year, between £70,000 and £100,000 must be found to keep the roof over their heads.
And this is where the club’s principles face their biggest test. With a lucrative shirt sponsor off-limits and no rich benefactor to open their wallet, FC United must shoulder the burden through collective responsibility. Fans can choose to donate monthly toward either the stadium or the playing budget. The onus is on chipping in whatever is possible. Club captain Ennis’s construction company has done work on the ground at a discount rate. Hurst said: “100% fan ownership is a red line. It’s so central to who we are.”
Results on the pitch have been mixed lately; even the presence of former Premier League striker Adam Le Fondre wasn’t enough to fire FC United any higher than a 17th-place finish this season. While other clubs in the league are full-time — including champions Macclesfield, who amassed 109 points en route to promotion — FC United will always be at a disadvantage. However, there’s a school of thought that they are right where they want to be.
“The higher up you go, the more compromises you have to make,” Seddon said. “Even at this level, it’s getting harder and harder to be competitive.”
For now, results on the pitch are welcome, but the main battleground is for financial security and to continue to prove that a different kind of football club is possible.
“We formed this club in the image of what we wanted Manchester United to be,” Baker said. “We’ll always be a story about how Manchester United fans did it their way.
“This club is ours and it’s our responsibility to make it work. If it were to die, it’d be like a part of us dying.”
