Why Man U? AskMen / Getty Images "Gathering together at Old
Trafford must have given these people something of the sense of
community that they had previously known in their villages."
Visiting Manchester the other day, I was driving down a
nondescript road past dreary shops and offices when I saw the
top of a sports stadium poking into the gray sky. It was Old
Trafford. Team buses carrying soccer players from more glamorous
cities such as Barcelona have been known to echo with cries of
disgust as they pull in here. The home of Manchester United is
rainy and underwhelming. The estimated 333 million humans who
consider themselves United fans don’t all know that Manchester
is a city in England, but many of those who do would probably be
surprised to find just how mid-ranking a city it is. Yet when
United’s American ruling family, the Glazers, sold club shares
in August, United was valued at $2.3 billion. That made it the
world’s most valuable sports franchise, ahead of Real Madrid and
baseball’s New York Yankee