It is rare that a final arrives with such a sense of trepidation, but that is the case as Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur fight for the Europa League trophy this week in Bilbao.
Both sides arrive in the Basque Country needing a win just as much for financial and squad-building reasons as they do for morale, and for Manchester United especially it is a stark illustration of how far the club has fallen since the days of regularly challenging for the top honours.
While fans navigate testing travel conditions to even arrive at the San Mames on Wednesday, United are preparing for a ninth major European final while sitting 16th in the league. But the current situation has become a fitting illustration of the decay that began 20 years ago this month, when two decades of neglect, mismanagement and contempt started as the Glazer family took control of the club.
It was in May 2005 that the Glazers purchased a controlling stake in the club, with fan protests having taken place at various points as a full takeover edged closer.
And the manner of the purchase of the club remains the root cause of fan discontent, with the Glazers using a leveraged buyout to finance the purchase. In short, United’s own assets were used as collateral for the loans used to purchase the club, suddenly saddling it with debts of at least £550m. It was the first time the club had been in the red since 1931.
“It was certainly very radical at the time, using the club’s assets to provide the funding,” says football finance expert Kieran Maguire.
“I don’t think it was very well understood, the nature of the takeover,” says Wayne Barton, a United season ticket holder who in recent years has become the pre-eminent historian on the club, having written several books including biographies of George Best and Eric Cantona.
“There was definite doubt, definite caution, definite mistrust,” he says when asked about the general feeling at the time from a fan point of view. “There was never an overwhelming feeling that this was going to be a good thing for United”. And it wasn’t.
“Certainly, in those early years, when the interest rates were very high, 14.25 per cent on the loans, it was taking up a substantial proportion of the club’s revenue,” says Maguire.
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He reiterates that United have always “had competitive budgets since 2005”, but explains that “the debt has always been an emotional issue as much as anything else”, rather than something that notably affects spending in the present.
“It’s symbolic in terms of the lack of progress,” he adds.
Barton is a little more animated, though he backs up that point when he provides a reminder that “any other club in England, if they were saddled with United’s debt, would have gone out of business”.
“The figures are there. If you took the money that’s been drained out of United, including the original debt and the interest that’s paid on it, if you put that on any other club in English football, they would have gone out of business.”
And the figures are indeed stark. United’s current debt stands at over £1bn overall, with the club having also paid £800m in interest alone since the takeover. In addition, the Glazers themselves have earned over £1bn from the club from share sales and dividends, according to The Athletic.
“They didn’t want to invest, fair enough, no one has made them invest and they haven’t done. They have never invested a single penny,” says Barton.
But in addition to the financial debt and the concept of the Glazers toying with the financial future of the club, it is the moral debt associated with the Glazers that is rarely mentioned when discussing fan sentiment.
In the 4-1 win over Bilbao in the semi-final second leg earlier this month, fans seated in the rows immediately in front of Sir Jim Ratcliffe stood up to protest being forced out of seats they have held for decades, with the area set to be used as hospitality seating from next season.
It is an issue affecting few fans overall, but it is emblematic of the collapse that has characterised the Glazer ownership – the erosion of the fan experience, and the decay of the relationship between the club and the fans.
While the Glazers revolutionised the process of maximising revenue streams, they have also been pioneers in the slow destruction of the average fan experience.
And this is an issue that is starting to happen everywhere. Chelsea co-owner Todd Boehly is allegedly involved as a director of a ticket re-sale website that had tickets for last weekend’s match against Manchester United available for £442. Manchester City have brought in a new policy that all season ticket holders must personally attend 10 of the 19 home Premier League matches next season, losing their ticket the next season if they fail to do so. Aston Villa came under fire for ridiculous Champions League ticket prices earlier this season.
It all points to something slightly more sinister, as the ‘legacy fans’ mentioned in the doomed Super League plans are priced out and moved on.
These issues often stem from the simple misunderstanding of clubs, with Barton emphasising that they are “still community assets” with “a romantic element” associated with them.
And it is in this romantic element where the Glazers have repeatedly fallen over. For United fans, it is not so much the concept of billionaire owners that irks them, but rather the perceived disregard for many of the intangibles that made the club what it is today.
“The accusation would be that they [the Glazers] don’t respect the history,” says Barton.
“The people who represented an old Manchester United from the late 1980s saw themselves as custodians of what came before. What the club was supposed to stand for, what it was supposed to represent,” he adds, emphasising the roles of Ferguson and former chairman Martin Edwards.
Since Ferguson retired, there has been little in the form of figures to continue acting as these custodians.
The scenes of Crystal Palace at Wembley on Saturday were a timely reminder of the types of things a football club is supposed to represent, from the fans and the community to shared experiences – whether that be weekly routines or once-in-a-lifetime moments.
But for United fans, those scenes will be a reminder that a club that was once just like Palace in terms of values has become a corporate machine, and one that often shows disdain towards its fans, its history and the community that it is supposed to represent.
For the higher-ups in the current iteration of Manchester United look at Saturday’s events hoping to replicate them only because of revenue. They care little if you have 20 years’ worth of memories watching the club every week with a relative who has now passed. Nor do they care if you or your friends are being priced out of going to games or taking your children.
And so Wednesday night serves as both a consolation and a reminder – as seen by Palace, Newcastle and Bologna in recent weeks – that United fans should heed. Win or lose, football is about these kinds of nights, whether this is a first trophy or a 50th, and whatever the state of the club may look like off the pitch.
Wednesday’s game wields two types of importance, one of them discussed in terms of balance sheets in the boardroom. But the other is unquantifiable, contained in the lived experiences of those on the terraces of the San Mames or the pubs of Stretford and Seven Sisters.
It is this type of experience that forms the foundation of why people follow their clubs, whether they’ve lived it dozens of times, experienced it only for the first time last week, or still attend every week in the hope of it one day happening.
For United fans, experiences like Wednesday, or the 5-4 quarter-final win over Lyon, are all “part of the fairytale, part of the romance”, explains Barton.
While the Glazers may be able to effectively take away your season ticket through price rises or restrictions, they cannot take away the individual experiences.
“Everything is attached to that DNA of the club,” adds Barton.
“And they can never own that”.
