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.”
These days, FC United play on their own ground, Broadhurst Park, which is the center of the club’s community. For many former Old Trafford regulars, one big difference is that families can afford to go to games together — an under-18 season ticket at FC United remains fixed at just £21 ($28), far less than you would pay for just one Premier League match — while others are attracted by the fan experience that rolls back the years, allowing them to watch the game standing on the terraces with beers in hands.
“I was 19 when FC United formed and I could never have afforded a season ticket at Old Trafford,” George Baker, a former board member, told ESPN. “But for some it was a much bigger sacrifice, giving up season tickets they’d had since the 1970s, all for a pipe dream we never knew if we could make work.”
In the early days of the club there was the constant question over whether it would simply fizzle out. Twenty years later, it’s safe to say that question has been answered.
“People said we wouldn’t last until Christmas,” said Seddon, referencing a quote by former United striker and radio pundit Alan Gowling. Those words have since been immortalized on fans’ T-shirts, and Gowling has received plenty of Christmas cards from FC United fans over the years.
On the pitch, the club has risen as high as the sixth-tier National League North, but these days are back in the Northern Premier League — the seventh tier of English football. Arguably the club’s greatest highlight was run to the second round of the FA Cup. But its legacy radiates out far beyond the pitch and FC United are often held up as an example of successful fan ownership by clubs around the world. Social media posts frequently receive comments from as far afield as Chile and Indonesia.
There is also now a younger generation of fans for whom FC United are a first love. In recent times, the club has also become more vocal about supporter issues in general as well as the situation at Manchester United. Chantal Adams, who runs FC United’s social media accounts, began her football journey as a ball girl at Broadhurst Park and has hardly visited Old Trafford despite living barely a mile away from the England’s biggest club stadium.
“My dad was a season ticket holder at Old Trafford, but he couldn’t afford to bring me too, he’d just go on his own,” Adams told ESPN. “Now we can go to FC United as a whole family thing.
“My dad’s generation grew up with football being about going to a game and a community experience. My generation grew up with football being a TV program. It’s hard to change that mindset.”
For those who did frequent Old Trafford, walking away from the three-time UEFA Champions League winners also meant walking away from glorious European nights, but that itch has also been scratched by the Fenix Trophy. A non-league Champions League for amateur teams with a community-centered ethos, the tournament has sent FC United all over Europe. In 2023-24, they lifted the trophy for the second time. Much like everything the club does, the Fenix Trophy is far removed from the slick corporate world of UEFA.
“The first tournament took place in 2021-22 during the COVID-19 pandemic, it seemed crazy at the time we’d be traveling at all,” Seddon said. “For our first game in Poland [against AKS Zly] a lot of our younger players hadn’t been given the COVID jab yet so they couldn’t travel. Our kit man ended up on the bench, and even came on.”
In 2022-23, the final of the Fenix Trophy was hosted at San Siro — a poignant moment for fans who had last been there to watch Manchester United beaten by AC Milan in March 2005.
“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.”
