FC United, Twenty Years On, Redefining Modern Football

As FC United of Manchester launches a year-long series of events to celebrate the club’s 20th anniversary, with an FC United Legends team taking on a Manchester United Legends team at Broadhurst Park on Sunday 18 May, we offer a vision that redefines modern football and places fans, football and community at the heart of the club.

On 12 May it will be twenty years since Malcolm Glazer’s hostile takeover of Manchester United – the final straw for many United fans who left to form their own football club. A month later, on 14 June 2005 FC United of Manchester was born and the supporter-owned club played its first league match in the North West Counties League away at Leek on 13 August 2005. Remarkably a club that didn’t exist three months earlier was competing in English football’s tenth tier. 

Imbued with the radical spirit of the city of Peterloo, Marx, Engels and the Suffragettes, there was defiance against the increasing commercialisation of the game we love that was being rammed down our throats. The formation of FC United was a two-fingered salute to the excess and greed that culminated in the Glazer takeover. We didn’t have to meekly accept it – there was a better way for football.

Some predicted this new football club wouldn’t last until Christmas but FC’s founding manifesto was clear that it was here for the long haul, referring to ‘ambitious and long-term plans’ and stating that ‘above all we want to be seen as a good example of how a club can be run in the interests of its members and be of benefit to its local communities’.

And two decades on, the club provides a beacon for fan ownership as the largest football club in the country wholly owned by its supporters and the first fan-owned football club in England to build its own football ground – our Broadhurst Park home in Moston, north Manchester that we moved into in 2015.  

FC’s formation was about much more than the fight against the Glazers, it was about building a sustainable fan-owned club and showing that fans can own and run clubs that are at the heart of their communities and disproving the old-fashioned notion that only wealthy individuals can own and run clubs by, instead, placing fans, football and community at the heart of everything the club does.

Fans are the beating heart of FC United whether it’s in electing the board, deciding on admission prices, approving the club’s annual business plan and budget or volunteering to assist the club in a multitude of tasks. With the club’s democratic one member, one vote structure, each co-owner gets an opportunity to have their say on how the club is run and ensure that it remains true to its founding principles. And with this collective ownership model comes empowerment. As co-owners, we’re not treated as mere customers dictated to by a distant super-rich owner but instead are able to participate in the running of the club and exert a collective power that is often denied us in other areas of our lives.

Football is the engine that drives the rest of the club and match days at Broadhurst Park are something special. The club’s match day offering – created ‘by the fans, for the fans’ – is one of the best in non-league football with its vibrant atmosphere, live music, poetry, theatre and comedy at regular pre-match event Course You Can Malcolm (which is free) and a tremendous variety of locally sourced food and drink. And, importantly, the club is committed to keeping admission and season ticket prices as affordable as possible.       

Community is embedded in the club’s founding principles. As a community benefit society we exist to be of benefit to our local community and recognise the role that football clubs can play in supporting their local communities. Our Broadhurst Park home in north Manchester with its football pitches, on-site gym and academy offers a source of recreation and learning for local people, young and old, and its function room and other spaces, offer the opportunity for social connection.

More than 30,000 people use the club’s 3G pitch annually and we run a multitude of activities that aim to improve people’s health and wellbeing: twice weekly ‘bootcamp’ fitness sessions that combine cardiovascular and strength training; yoga sessions; disability football; walking football; Wildcats football sessions for girls; school holiday camps for children who receive free school meals; and a long-standing Sporting Memories Group that meets weekly and offers an important social connection for people aged 50 and over. 

And the club also empowers our local community not only in our extensive community work but also through our role as a local employer - FC United was the first football club in the country to become a Living Wage employer in 2014 - and the countless volunteering opportunities we offer. 

Over the last two decades it’s been difficult to imagine a greater contrast between the owners of Manchester’s two red-shirted football clubs who bear the name ‘United’: one a family who are distant, devoid of any emotional connection to the club they own and intent on squeezing every last pound from a huge global brand; the other the club’s own supporters determined to preserve this thing of ours and ensure it strengthens its community. One a club where supporters are bottom of the pile versus the other where supporters’ interests are its cornerstone.

In 2023 as the Glazers appeared to be heading for the Old Trafford exit some people questioned the  continued existence of the football club set up in protest at the Glazer heist but arguably FC United is needed right now more than it’s ever been. And this was illustrated recently when The 1958 group of Manchester United fans reached out to the club for advice and support and we stood side by side with them in a joint protest at Broadhurst Park at the end of March. We are stronger United. And early in April the Manchester United legend Eric Cantona showed his support for the club and the wider fan ownership movement by becoming a co-owner during a visit to Broadhurst Park. 

Kevin Miles, the CEO of the Football Supporters’ Association recently described FC as having a ‘totemic importance’ to the supporter ownership movement and as we’ve blazed a trail by becoming the first English club to compete in (and win) the FENIX Trophy – a European trophy for non-league clubs that began in 2021 – it’s become apparent as we’ve travelled across Europe that we’re viewed as an inspiration and a role model for many recently established fan-owned clubs as far afield as Poland and Montenegro. 

Supporter ownership of football clubs is a modern phenomenon – at the turn of the century there weren’t any fan-owned football clubs in England – and we offer an alternative vision of what modern football can be that’s not reliant on wealthy individuals. With fan ownership comes a caution that prioritises the long-term sustainability of the club over boom-or-bust bids for promotion. There is no wealthy backer ready to pump money into the club to chase promotion or avoid relegation – it’s reliant instead on the collective strength of more than 2,000 co-owners.

With this financial caution, some have questioned whether, stripped of our ‘punk football’ rebelliousness, FC United has become ‘just another football club’. But off the pitch, whether in the stands, the boardroom, the bar or in its day-to-day operation, the club is a remarkably different beast to most other football clubs.

Speaking of the club’s landmark anniversary, chair Nick Boom said “it’s testament to an extraordinary collective effort by staff, volunteers, board members, players, co-owners and supporters that we’re able to celebrate the club’s twentieth anniversary and I’d like to thank, on behalf of the board, everyone who’s played their part in getting us this far. We look forward to being at the forefront of the supporter ownership movement and offering a better way for football for generations to come”.   

We’ve got a long way to go to realise this club’s full potential but it feels like we can look forward with renewed optimism that FC United, just like another football club formed down the road in Newton Heath by railway workers in 1878, will be around as a source of recreation, learning and matchday thrills for generations to come. This thing of ours, 20 years on, is still something special.

So it’s time to celebrate everything that FC United has achieved over the last 20 years and what the club stands for and through the rest of 2025 and into 2026 the club will host a year-long series of events to do just that. Beginning on Sunday 18May when an FC United Legends team will take on a Manchester United Legends team at Broadhurst Park.