Club charmed today’s adults in their glory days but must reignite their spark or risk losing younger generations
“It is hard to find a way to explain what this club means to me,” Matheus Cunha said in an interview after signing for Manchester United. In football there is a lot of emotion. It’s almost a religion: you have that deep, otherworldly experience one day and connect; and from that moment on you are in a place beyond all logic, beyond all thought.
So when Cunha explains that this club is his “dream”, it is easy to understand that.
“My house didn’t have the channel to watch the Premier League,” he said. “My cousin’s house didn’t have the channel. Only in my grandma’s house we can watch the Premier League, so we organised to go every weekend.
“And for me, it was always a bit inside of me, this club. When I play with my cousin in the street, on the beach, on the gravel pitch, we called these pitches ‘Old Trafford’.
“I remember the whole squad at the time that I started to watch. In the front, Rooney, wow … Ronaldo, everyone knows … Ryan Giggs. Everyone. I can imagine the team, it started with Van der Sar in the goal, Rio Ferdinand, Vidic, the defenders, Paul Scholes, Carrick. The team for me, honestly, was a big impact for my teenage years.”
It’s proof that, while they sit in a footballing abyss largely of their own making, United’s legacy still holds magnetic power. For a 26‑year‑old Brazil international who grew up in Joao Pessoa without consistent TV access but watching the club at every opportunity he could snatch, the chance to finally play at Old Trafford would be an overwhelming offer he would jump at.
It’s hard to overstate that kind of emotional pull. And Cunha is not alone: that vivid recollection can be traced to a million more kids across the world, playing in their little backyards of “Old Traffords”, a generation enchanted by United’s dominance on the pitch. From 1992–2013, the Theatre of Dreams was the Theatre of Dreams. That night in Barcelona, that night in Moscow. A “Glory, glory, Man United” that radiated from England, west to South America, east across the tropical enclaves of Africa to the farthest reaches of Asia. Even now, as the club languishes, elite players like Cunha still remember.
But therein lies the rub. They remember. Does today’s generation share the same romanticism as Cunha? The treble in Barcelona is too far in the past, filed away in the records of the 20th century, observable only in the tales of the aged, before their grandkids chuckle and say “Sure, grandpa.”
Even Moscow is too far away. One of the youngest of the great legends of that night, Cristiano Ronaldo, is now 40, admittedly still clinging on to football but not for long. Soon there will be an entire generation of football fans in their 20s who will not share that memory. Worse, it could possibly be the blue side of Manchester for them.
United’s flirtation with irrelevance – in the latest episode, finishing 15th and missing Europe completely – has had rival fans grinning in delight. This summer transfer window came with a puzzle though. “Why are they still going there?” one fan asked; perhaps humorously but it’s not hard to imagine frustration that the best players can still choose to go to Old Trafford – even stripped of top-table relevance, stripped of European football, stripped of the dream.
That dream continues to reside in players like Cunha, but for how long? Long enough, United might hope, long enough to turn things around on the pitch. That would certainly be the hope of Sir Jim Ratcliffe as he tries to steer his newly acquired Titanic away from a treacherous iceberg.
The badge still resonates globally. Just after their failure last season the United squad jetted off to stoke the embers of the dying fire in the east. They made an estimated £10m – nowhere near enough to offset the loss of missing out on Europe after losing to Tottenham, but it was something. But the seeds of that goodwill in Kuala Lumpur and Hong Kong were also sown in the glory days.
For newer generations there are more ambitious alternatives than an old club who used to be great but now play football difficult to watch. Those born during United’s lean years will tilt towards football allegiances shaped by Klopp’s Liverpool, Guardiola’s City, even Arteta’s Arsenal – if they can put a trophy on it. There will be no talent dreaming of playing at Old Trafford with its legacy in his memory. United still have time to turn things around, but they are fast running out of it.
