Manchester United chief executive Omar Berrada has said he “would love” for Ruben Amorim to lead the club into a new stadium but has conceded the cost of building it may be a “risk” to transfer budgets.
Berrada said United want to be responsible in recruitment regardless, and the team can still be competitive throughout the build, which the club hope will take five years to complete rather than 10 and cause less disruption.
Berrada also defended the club against accusations they have abandoned the top-down approach to squad-building by appointing a head coach so wedded to one system, insisting the type of players United target will be able to operate in various positions.
Amorim has spoken about the prospect of leaving United should results continue to be poor, with United 14th in the Premier League. His record is 10 wins, seven draws, nine defeats and much now hinges on the Europa League, with Real Sociedad visiting Old Trafford in the second leg of the last-16 tie on Thursday.
But Berrada, who was key in Amorim’s arrival, said: “We’d love to open the new stadium with Ruben as head coach.” United plan for work to finish in time for the start of the 2030-31 campaign.
Berrada admitted the examples of Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur showed building a stadium could affect recruitment. “That is a risk,” he said. “Clearly it’s something we want to avoid. We don’t want to inhibit our ability to invest in the team, for us to continue being competitive while we are building a new stadium.
“There are various ways around that; one of the things we are looking at is to shorten the construction timelines so we can have a new stadium within five years, that’s our ambition.
“In the meantime, by getting our finances back in order and becoming profitable, we believe that we can be very competitive. The big, big benefit that this club has is that it has the biggest fanbase in the world and therefore the ability to be the number one in terms of revenues that it generates.”
He added: “We are not necessarily going to be investing significant amounts. But that is going to be out of choice because we want to manage our football costs more efficiently. Our number one goal is to get our teams winning and to get the men’s team competing for all the titles consistently. We are not going to deviate from that.”
United’s underperformance in the league means they will likely have to win the Europa League to earn a place in next season’s Champions League and the financial rewards that come with it.
“There’s no doubt that if we qualify to the Champions League, we will have more revenues and we’ll have more capacity to invest in the team,” Berrada said. “But we are putting in place various financial measures to allow us to go and invest at the summer, even if we’re outside of Europe.”
United say the new stadium will take five years to build (Manchester United/Foster + Partners)
The new stadium, with a proposed 100,000 capacity, would eventually help that hugely.
“We’re a PLC so we have to be very careful about giving any revenue forecasts but the initial business planning shows that we can increase our EBITDA significantly, potentially increase it to £120m-£130m,” Berrada said. EBITDA is essentially operating profits before transfers and debt repayments.
He said the stadium would cost £2billion but did not give detail on how it might be funded. “We won’t be asking for taxpayer money to fund the stadium,” he said. “But, at the same time, the stadium, the new build, in isolation, does not make sense if there’s not an investment in the wider generation project.”
Borrowing more money, selling naming rights, and minority owners INEOS putting in cash are all on the table, according to Berrada.
“At this stage, all the options are open,” he said. “We’re not closing any doors, so we obviously want the stadium to give us additional revenues for us to be able to invest into the team.
“What we do know is that there is already an enormous amount of interest in big brands wanting to associate their brand with ours and the new stadium.”
Ticket prices are set to rise, as Sir Jim Ratcliffe revealed, but Berrada said a bigger capacity would allow for more flexibility in future.
“For the current stadium, we are still working through what we are going to do for next season (re season tickets). Jim gave you an idea of the direction of travel but we are not ready to announce it yet,” he said
“The big advantage of increasing the capacity to 100,000 and as you heard the demand is quite high — is that we’ll be able to have more flexibility to accommodate our core fans as well as fans who can maybe only come twice a season. And we’ll be able to offer a range of products.”
United’s planned new home will have a 100,000 capacity (Manchester United/Foster + Partners)
Patrick Dorgu and Ayden Heaven are the only first-team signings to arrive under Amorim so far, aged 20 and 18 and coming in at a combined initial cost of £26.5million. There have been issues around players adjusting to his 3-4-2-1 formation, but Berrada believes the signings to come will fit that system and others.
“I think it’s riskier if you have a coach that doesn’t have a clear idea of how he wants to play,” said Berrada. “And with Ruben we don’t see that risk. When it comes to our recruitment strategy, without commenting too much, the idea we have is to be able to bring in versatile players that can be adaptable to multiple systems.
“And ultimately, Ruben himself has said it, it’s not about the 3-4-3 tactical formation, it’s about an idea, a concept of how he wants to see the team playing. He wants to see the team playing more on the front foot, more of a possession, attacking-based style of football. So for that, you need players that can play in multiple positions that can adapt to that vision that Ruben has. And this is what we’re going try to do over the next years in in our recruitment.”
Improving the data department will be a key element. Berrada said: “On the technical side, we have a coach that has a very clear identity and very clear idea of how he wants the team to play. Then we have Jason Wilcox as a technical director who works extremely closely with Ruben and they’re very aligned on what we need to do in terms of recruitment.
“Then there are certain areas that need to be improved. Data analytics is one of them. And again, it’s at the top of our list of the areas that we want to invest in to get better at. Because as you all know, to improve, to be really good at recruitment, you need the very good technical people that are complemented by very good data analytics insights.”
(Top photo: Carl Recine/Getty Images)
