| Iconic. Ambitious. Exciting. Spine-tingling. All these adjectives and more greeted Tuesday morning’s announcement that Manchester United will build a 100,000-seater stadium to replace Old Trafford, and construct it within a five-year period. Add some context and one has to admire, above all, Big Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s chutzpah. Debts for his petrochemicals empire are forecast to reach almost £10bn this year. The All Blacks are taking legal action against Ineos for exiting a sponsorship deal early. Big Sir Jim has introduced a raft of cost-cutting measures at United, including more than 400 job losses and closure of the staff canteen. On Monday he said that without those savings the club would have been bankrupt by Christmas. The men’s team, meanwhile, sit 14th in the Premier League, at times flirting with a relegation scrap. The squad, Big Sir Jim says, are overpaid and in some cases not good enough. Still, the Brexit-supporting Monaco tax exile insists United are capable of building a venue that will be the envy not just of the Premier League, but the entire world. It will, he claims, create as many as 92,000 jobs and generate £7.3bn annually for the UK economy. With an all-important caveat, Big Sir Jim sought to put pressure on the government, by saying the success of the project will hinge on their commitment to it. “If the government really gets behind this regeneration scheme,” he declared, “then we will build an iconic football stadium.” Having been transformed into a debt-laden investment vehicle for the enrichment of a few at the expense of many, Manchester United is the perfect symbol of modern Britain. The Glazers have been siphoning cash out of the place for 20 years, a fact gently hinted at by Big Sir Jim when he said Old Trafford has “fallen behind” other leading sports venues. All of this required the type of mental gymnastics befitting the proposed stadium’s circus-tent design – incidentally called an “umbrella” by Foster + Partners architects, appropriate enough given the perpetually leaky Old Trafford roof. “It will hugely benefit that region which I am very close to,” Ratcliffe trumpeted. Although not that close, Jim, since you moved to Monaco? Amid all the excitement – including a Gary Neville voiceover that made you worry Michael Owen would soon appear in a CGI helicopter – big questions remain. How much is it going to cost, and who will pay? Omar Berrada, the Manchester United chief suit, was predictably evasive on the tricky subject of money. “It’s still quite early,” he whistled. “As a PLC we can’t speculate too much about the funding. What I would say is as the centrepiece of the regeneration project, it is a very attractive investment opportunity.” Like so many modern infrastructure projects, then, it will be about “creating value”, “commercial potential” and, as Sebastian Coe perplexingly put it, “the unlocking of other potentialities”. Being such an attractive investment opportunity, perhaps the Glazers might be interested in ploughing some cash in? Or would that, like so much of the noise emanating from Manchester United on this day, be a little too far-fetched? | 