Manchester United plan to keep Old Trafford - even if they build a new stadium on adjacent land.
In a new twist in the Old Trafford redevelopment project, it has emerged United will keep their famous home in scaled-down form if, as expected, they build a new home. United are leaning towards building a new £2billion, 100,000-capacity, state-of-the-art stadium on land owned by the club next to Old Trafford.
The belief was that Old Trafford, United’s iconic home since 1910, would be demolished to make way for the new stadium, which the club want to be “the Wembley of the north “.
But if United do proceed with building a new stadium, the plan is for Old Trafford, which can currently hold 74,310 fans, to be scaled down to a capacity of around 30,000 to 35,000.
The reduced capacity arena would be used as a stadium for United’s women’s team, as the club’s various academy teams.
The thinking behind the move would be to preserve as much as possible the history and heritage of Old Trafford, including statues of Sir Matt Busby, Sir Alex Ferguson and United’s holy trinity of George Best, Denis Law and Sir Bobby Charlton.
Other features to be preserved in a scaled-down Old Trafford would include the Munich clock and the central tunnel on the halfway line, which players used to use in the past, which is the only existing part of the original 1910 stadium.
When Old Trafford became an all-seater stadium, in the wake of the Hillsborough disaster, with the publication of the Taylor report, the capacity was 44,000.
That was expanded for Euro 96, in order to host games, with the North Stand redevelopment. Subsequent expansions, including the filling in of the quadrants, have seen Old Trafford expand, to leave only Wembley with a bigger capacity.
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