Im at the Wyscout forum in Barcelona, one of the very few journalists present. One hundred of the worlds leading clubs are here, with 300 agents who pay 10,000 a year to be a member of this little known group who hold these exclusive events. Money that buys the agents access to clubs to do deals, a kind of speed-dating for transfers in the cloak and dagger world of player sales.
City, Chelsea, Benfica, Liverpool, Juventus all use Wyscout. Most of the big South American clubs too. United dont. United keep themselves to themselves, its their style. Negotiate on their terms. Deal with people on their terms.
Write a letter outlining a grievance and the club will deal with it. Go to the media first and publicise it and the club dont want to succumb to what they see as public blackmail.
United share Carrington Moss with Manchester City and Sale Sharks rugby team, three top-flight professional outfits training on the same lush west Manchester turf. United and City, for obvious reasons, dont share morning coffees. Interaction is limited to the players lining up alongside each other each morning at the traffic lights at the end of the Carrington spur. Though before a derby in 2000, City players ran as a group to the gates of Uniteds centre and did what was described as a haka to try and excorcise the red demon in their midst. They lost the next day at Maine Road. Beckham, 1-0.
City and Sale get on well. Sale are allowing Citys young players to train on their pitch at present while Citys main training pitches are prepared for pre-season. They communicate, they mix, rugby and football, professionally and socially. United kept it far more private. Theyre not the rude neighbour, more the polite one who keeps himself to himself.
United are not private when it comes to marketing, they cant afford to be. An email has just arrived from Old Trafford entitled Guarantee your seat for Chelsea at home! The advert continues BIG GAMES. THEY DESERVE MORE THAN JUST A BIG TV.
Theres no plasma screen or surround sound on earth that does justice to the big games at the Theatre of Dreams. The atmosphere really has to be experienced to be believed.
United have gone on the attack to sell season tickets. Its marketing speak. What did you expect? A searingly honest line stating: You wont see Wayne Rooney next season as he wants to go to Chelsea and Chelsea want him. But we dont want to sell him to Chelsea and were working on that one. If he does go, youll still see him a few times wearing a blue shirt.
No, this is marketing. The only way to guarantee a seat for Chelsea at home, it explains, is to buy a season ticket.
Needs must. Such was the demand, United didnt need to advertise tickets until two years ago. Then the club started to invite fans to join a waiting list for a season ticket. Except you didnt need to wait for a season ticket, though you did need to wait for one of the best season tickets closer to the pitch and not up in the gods or at the back of stands.
United need to put bums on seats and there are 76,000 of those to be filled for every home game. Its a miracle that United have enjoyed sell-out crowds for league matches since 1992, a level of consistency in support that no other club in world football can match. Dont pay too much attention to the figures given by Greater Manchester Police about the official official attendances either.
They claimed, on average, that there were 10,000 fewer people inside Old Trafford than the club said. That there were only 65,601 inside the ground for the last Manchester derby, not 75,527 as reported. I sat in the Stretford End that night and looked around. If there were 10,000 empty seats that then my name is Eric Djemba Djemba and I live in Narvik.
The police didnt tell the club that there was a freedom of information request coming in as usual and the club were unable to answer correctly. Those figures brought up a valid point though clubs publish attendances according to tickets sold and not how many people are in the ground.
There are definitely games when there is a large discrepancy between the two, but the GMP figures didnt count the executive areas fully and Old Trafford has 9,000 executive seats.
Thats an aside. After years of courting foreign markets and not paying sufficient attention to fans who actually go to matches, United have changed tack. Mancunian fans are used to advertisements for season tickets, laden with quotes about smelling the grass, the smell of the game. In short, one of the sensations that television cannot offer.
Season ticket holders get an exclusive magazine, theres a 0% option if you want the season ticket on credit and the prices have been held more or less for three years. Season tickets are as cheap as £28 per match for adults behind both goals, though the average is closer to £38 per game, or £1,000 per season.
There are other changes. Uniteds line about: The atmosphere really has to be experienced to be believed, drew a wry smile from this Red because it implies that Old Trafford has a wonderful atmosphere. What constitutes a good atmosphere is subjective. Chris Lee, Director of Populous architecture which designed the Emirates and the Olympic stadium, said Arsenals new home produces a phenomenal atmosphere which cements the relationship between the players and the crowds.
Really? Is that the same Emirates which is famous for being like a library and having a poor atmosphere. Lee claims that Arsenals brief to him was to create the most beautiful and intimidating atmosphere and stadium. The stadium is beautiful, the atmosphere is as intimidating as a royal polo match.
Old Trafford doesnt have a great atmosphere for 90% of matches. It used to have one, but price rises and changes like all seater stadia have diluted it. Putting a block of executive seats in the middle of the Stretford End, the old vocal heart of the United didnt help either. I put this to Martin Edwards, then chairman, and he admitted, in hindsight, that it was a mistake.
United have realized that the atmosphere can and should be a selling point, a spectacular backdrop that can also help the team. Fans have been encouraged to bring flags, the club have given assistance too. At the aforementioned derby, a surfer flag was passed over my head and then efficiently collected and stored by stewards. Its hardly Serie As ultra culture for authenticity, but then Serie As relationship with fans is hardly a shining example. Attendances are down across Italy, in part because people dont think its safe to watch football in cities like Rome.
United secretary John Alexander, formerly of Spurs, is influential in improving the atmosphere and the club commissioned an acoustics engineer who attended two games in April and came back with the news that the sound travels less well from the Stretford End than from the quadrant, due to the shape at the back of the stand and the slope of the roof. Which maybe true, but some of the best atmospheres are at stadiums which dont even have a roof or have a running track. The fact is, not nearly enough United fans sing because the vocal singers are spread around the stadium thats if they still go to matches at all. And if they do, they tend to arrive at the stadium very late and sing the songs too fast.
Others in senior positions at the club are keen for change. Some were United fans long before they started working for the club and they know that a lot of fans have simply stopped going to games for various reasons.
Building the atmosphere back up wont be easy. In the past it was a reflection of society and that, plus fan culture, has changed. But the moves should be welcomed, even if they are too little, too late.
Now Ill go off to find Thiagos dad here at Wyscout and see if hell stop messing about and get his son to sign for the champions of England