Manchester United might have slightly lost their aura due to underwhelming results after Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement but nobody is under any illusions about the scale of the club.
FC Twente will be the latest team to come to Old Trafford and get a first-hand idea of it in the Europa League curtain raiser.
Erik ten Hag has already admitted he would have ‘preferred somebody else’ as an opponent due to his emotional ties with the team.
Manchester United will want to put down a statement performance regardless and the opponent boss has accepted that they can’t be taken lightly because of recent history.
FC Twente boss on ‘world-class’ Man Utd
It can be said that for years under the Glazer ownership, the vast potential of the club was never completely realised.
The team had lost its luster on the pitch, but the brand of the club remained so strong that it kept printing money anyway.
Now with Ineos at the helm and football affairs back on the priority, the early signs are positive and the momentum is trending upwards.
The 7-0 win vs Barnsley and the subsequent performance vs Crystal Palace stands as a marker for progress and FC Twente manager Joseph Oosting has now compared United to Real Madrid and Barcelona.
He spoke to the media ahead of their Europa League game and said: “Manchester is a top club with a top team. This club fits in the row of Real Madrid and Barcelona. Manchester has a team with weapons, plays structured football, and plays in the Premier League, that is world-class.”
While United have been left behind by the two Spanish giants on the pitch, it is a testament to the enduring power of the fanbase and the club’s identity that it still competes with them off it.
Challenge to narrow the gap on the pitch
With Ineos’ arrival, the path to narrowing the gap to the true elites of the game on the pitch has started already.
Leny Yoro’s arrival after he chose to join Man United over Real Madrid could well be seen as a watershed moment for the Ineos era in a few years if the club returns to glory days.
The signs of a coherent vision and the clear path to make that vision a reality are all there and the work that has been done so far is promising.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe has said from the very beginning that if things are done right at Old Trafford, the potential is limitless.
That is true too, especially as United continued to fight off the pitch with the elite clubs when their results were nowhere near those of the elites.
For that, slow steps will need to be made and the first one might well be to get out of the competition they are playing in right now for next season.
Becoming Champions League qualifiers regularly can be the first step and if United can achieve that this season, Oosting words will be true for more than the United brand. They’ll be true for the United football club.
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