Revealed: Progress Of Sir Jim’s New Trafford 2028 Plans

Man Utd have hold first meeting of the Old Trafford Rebuilding Task Force as they look to revamp their home stadium.

Manchester United chief operating officer Collette Roche visited Real Madrid to take a look at their iconic stadium a week before the first meeting of the Old Trafford Regeneration Task Force.

The Daily Mail revealed Roche was earlier spotted by Man City fans flying back from their Champions League quarter-final in Madrid last week, before it was learned that the purpose of her visit was to take a look at the recently remodelled Santiago Bernabeu.

Manchester United would look to build a stadium with a capacity of 100,000 if they decide to leave Old Trafford, according to shareholder Sir Jim Ratcliffe.

Ratcliffe and INEOS completed the purchase of a 28% stake in United last month and the club have since confirmed plans to review the future of Old Trafford.

A task force featuring Lord Sebastian Coe, Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham and United legend Gary Neville has been set up to assess the next steps.

Since taking control of football operations at United, Ratcliffe has been vocal about his desire to create a state-of-the-art stadium that could act as a ‘Wembley of the north’.

Speaking on the Geraint Thomas Cycling Club podcast, Ratcliffe spoke further about his plans to either renovate Old Trafford or build a new stadium on the adjacent land owned by the club.

“Manchester United are arguably the greatest club in the world,” he said. “Definitely in the top three clubs in the world. They are probably the biggest sports brand worldwide. It’s a bit like Coca-Cola – anywhere you go in the world, they’ve heard of Manchester United.

“It needs to have a stadium that is befitting the club and the brand. That might have been the case 20 years ago, but it isn’t today. [Old Trafford] is a little bit tired.”

If you look at what Real Madrid are doing with the Bernabeu and Barcelona with the Nou Camp, the Bernabeu is fabulous. It’s like a cauldron of noise. The Nou Camp is enormous and they are spending a lot of money revamping it.”

You look at the Premier League, we don’t have anything that compares. And yet the Premier League is several times bigger than the Spanish league in terms of size, scale and importance today. That’s where all the money is with TV.

The Premier League needs to have some grounds which are the equal of our European competitors.

“We can refurbish the ground and have a fantastic stadium, that will take about a billion to do that, and the club can shoulder that burden. But we have got this opportunity to build a new ground if we choose to. We’ve got enough space to build a completely new ground.”

If we build a completely new ground, it would be state of the art, world-class, [have a capacity of 90,000 or even 100,000. I think that then provides a platform for some of the big competitions in the north of England. Why shouldn’t England play in the north? Why is the FA Cup final always in the south?

Biggest stadium across Europe

All these and many other questions was pointed out by Sir Jim Ratcliffe who intends to make Manchester United’s new £2bn stadium to be the biggest in Europe with over a 100,000 sitting capacity.

According to Sir Jim Ratcliffe Old Trafford should be a stadium that the whole of Greater Manchester can take pride in, and be a catalyst for sustainable, cohesive growth in an area of the city that has been neglected for too long.