Like so many of the foreign managers who have graced English club football, Ruben Amorim sometimes has a way with words that defies the fact he is compelled to speak in a second language. And that was the way the other night.
“The sound of the stadium was the best ever,” he said after the scarcely-believable Manchester United comeback against Lyon at Old Trafford. “Some people collect shirts, scarves, but I want to keep that sound – it is the best sound in the world.”
It was a sound that was still ringing in these ears the following day, a reminder of the pandemonium that engulfed one of the great arenas in British sport. No-one was worried about a leaky roof or crowded toilets when Harry Maguire’s head heralded bedlam.
No-one was worried about having a Wembley of the north or a stadium that looks like a giant circus tent. No-one was worried that there were only 70-odd thousand people inside Old Trafford.
“That is what this stadium does for you,” said Maguire. What a shame then that, amongst others, Monaco-resident Sir Jim Ratcliffe, Chelsea-fan Lord Sebastian Coe and Andy Burnham, an Evertonian, want ‘this stadium’ done for.
What a shame that none of them – not even the co-owner of the club – appeared to be there on Thursday night. If they were, they might have had a change of heart. Look, everyone gets the long-term economic reasoning behind the idea of razing Old Trafford to the ground and building a new state-of-the-art arena.
And no-one would deny Old Trafford, judged alongside ultra-modern arenas such as the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, looks and feels a little dated. But while I am no architect, would it really be impossible to renovate and redevelop United’s current stadium, preserving the glorious sense of history that, at last, re-emerged in those incredible late scenes against Lyon?
That is what they seem to have done at the Bernabeu in Madrid. To a certain extent, that is what they have done at Anfield.
Some grounds are beyond redevelopment. The West Ham United owners would argue that was the case when they left Upton Park for the London Stadium.
Almost indisputably, that is the case in Everton’s move from Goodison Park to a riverside stadium, but even to the untrained eye, that is surely not the case at Old Trafford. It is no longer a benchmark for elite football stadia, far from it.
But the fans are close to the pitch, the acoustics are good and there is still a pervasive feeling of what has gone before. Of course, for United fans, it is easy to get sentimental about the place when the team has just put in the sort of stirring performance that was once a trademark of previous playing occupants.
But the truth is that, as a stage for fantastic football matches that create an atmosphere that makes the spine tingle, there was nothing unfit for purpose about Old Trafford when Maguire administered the coup de grace against the French on Thursday. And to see it demolished would be a grim day in Manchester United’s history. As Maguire and Amorim would doubtless agree.
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