In 2005, the American Glazer family conducted a leveraged buyout, raising prices and leaving the club heavily in debt. In 2024, after multinational group Ineos took over operations, prices rose again. Discounts are reduced for children, senior citizens and other groups. Longtime season-ticket holders were relocated to make room for hospitality ticket holders, who lounged in cushioned seats and dined on molasses-marinated duck breast with plum preserves.
Vinny, a blind installer, tried to ignore the rise in prices. “There’s still a great community,” he said, “where your group of friends go.” But his friends started disappearing. Attending games is not only expensive, but increasingly unpleasant. Barriers separate crowds into convoy routes before and after games, and fans can remain inside the stadium long after the final whistle so rival groups don’t clash outside. “Before you do anything, you’re going to be treated like a criminal. You wouldn’t accept that in any other industry, would you?” Vinny said.
And, really, there’s the dirty stuff, and dirty. Vinny still enjoys sitting in rival stadiums, such as Liverpool’s Anfield, with a healthy dose of trepidation – “Love the idea of going to Anfield because I know I might get kicked,” he says. However, as president of Gianni Infantino FIFAIt was recently declared that “football is for everyone” and in some ways this is true. In any fan base, there’s an insistence that loyalty to the badge trumps all differences – and it’s a beautiful sentiment until people open their mouths. At Old Trafford, Vinny often sat in front of a man who launched into the same racist chants every fortnight. “Nobody says ‘idiot,'” Vinny said. Eventually, one of Vinny’s friends beat the man. At halftime, the fans came over. “He said, ‘We’re all Manchester United fans, aren’t we?’ No, you’re just a bastard,” Vinny said. “It’s not 1970 anymore, it’s not even 1980.”
Twelve years ago, Vinny stopped going to Manchester United games religiously. “They didn’t want me there,” he said. “Fight for what you believe in or leave. I almost left Manchester United.”
A year has passed. On Sundays Vinny would go to Turnmouth Common in south Manchester to watch an amateur league match. The River Mersey flows through the base of the playing field. One day Vinny walked his two-year-old son along the river to Chorlton-cum-Hardy and then along Chorlton Creek, a tributary. Between the creek and the river he came to a football field.
The ground belongs to a club called West Didsbury, known to supporters of Chorlton AFC as West. The club competes in the North West Counties Football League, the ninth tier of English football. Anything below the top four tiers of English football is considered non-league and West fit that category perfectly. Vinny’s first game didn’t even have a hundred people. His children crawled along the sideline. “You just sit there,” Vinny said. “You just feel comfortable. You think, i like this”.
Founded in 1908, West spent much of its first century bouncing up and down the amateur league ladder on nameless pitches around south Manchester. When the team settled at Brookbourne Road in Chorlton in 1996, it was just one of thousands of non-league clubs with almost no one playing for them. Swear words, referee whistles, the sound of boots hitting the ball (and sometimes even shins) easily spread across the desolate field.