United’s leap from semi-failure to epic failure somehow just feels right

Maybe it needs to fail properly, in a way that might finally hurt those who own it

24 May 2025 - Sport

Barney Ronay

Oh yes, Europe. Now you see it. Now you understand why we’re harvesting your players, hoovering up your football culture, poaching your 27-year-old rollerblading hyper-nerd coaches. This is the spectacle we’re creating over here on our island of trade and innovation. Behold our Europa League final, our Wednesday night field of the cloth of gold. Look on our works and … well, maybe go out for a sandwich instead.

The all-english Europa League final has already taken some stick for not being a spectacle worthy of the occasion. Or at least, for looking like what it was: two muddled teams scrabbling for the last escape ladder. It would be normal at this stage to bring out the phrase about a pair of bald men fighting over a comb. But baldness at least has a pattern. Baldness is noble. This was more like two men with bad, failing hair transplants fighting over an emergency toupée.

But Wednesday night was also a significant outcome for English football generally. From a neutral perspective the correct bad team won. The good bad guys beat the bad bad guys. The people for whom this was the greatest moment of their supporting lives got to go berserk at the end, rather than a fanbase for whom this would always have been a consolation, a make-do after another lost season.

The second half was also a properly absorbing spectacle, if only because Manchester United had most of the ball and were forced to just exist out there in all that light, confused by the space, the angles, by the inflated sphere at their feet, a non-team applying itself earnestly to some incomprehensible task, like a labrador trying very hard to drive a steam engine.

Tottenham are at least well-run. There is merit in their success. This is basically what Ineos would like to create. Small wage bill. Managed discontent. Big stadium that makes money. A modern football club has been called into being, in contrast to the Glazer-sphere, where just walking up to Old Trafford feels like the most grudgingly tolerated consumer experience, a place where some day soon they’re going to start stopping you at the perimeter in order to pour water down your neck, steal your iphone, laugh at your shoes.

This will be no comfort to United’s supporters, who will stage another protest against the ownership before tomorrow’s final home league game against Aston Villa. But more widely there is a reassuring sense of logic in United failing. This is what should happen right now. The people running the club do not deserve success. Failure suggests, at the very least, some sense of order in the universe. And yes, with all due apologies, it is also fantastically entertaining. This is the brand now: Epic Failure. Even the scroll of score-settling agent-sourced headlines after Wednesday’s defeat were totally moreish. Amorim Curls Into Ball In Laundry Room as Showdown Talks Loom. Revealed: Hidden Message as Wantaway Ace Posts Cryptic Pic of Wheel of Cheese. Arrogant Ratcliffe ‘Ate Entire Packet of Chewing Gum’ in Front of Crying Nurse.

There are just so many layers now. One of the best currently is the way United’s players will improve, unarguably and dramatically, the moment they leave the club. Were the players always better than they looked? Does the act of leaving release its own high-performance endorphins? There must be some way of harnessing this. Perhaps United could hypnotise their players into believing they’ve already gone. No, you’re at Sporting Gijón now. Everyone loves you. The climate is nice. Tell him he’s Antony and send him back out there.

And if playing for United really is the equivalent of running inside an oxygen chamber then the club should seek to monetise this, reposition itself as some kind of rehab or rest cure. Send us your sullen, underperforming stars. They’ll absolutely hate it. They’ll hate it so much they’ll be back in six months playing like maniacs. Although of course strict controls are needed. If United’s malaise really is a performance-enhancing drug, how many times can you leave and come back flaming with hater-silencing energy before you turn into a fentanyl zombie?

Obviously Ruben Amorim is still fascinating, still locked in a managerial reign marked by highly visual mini-eras. Amorim turned up like the handsome, successful man in an advert for caffeine-powered shampoo. Within two weeks he was fumbling through the press conference doors looking haunted and hollow-eyed, a hostage shuffled from safe house to safe house.

Losing in Bilbao speaks to all of this. It fits. It feels right. Nothing should ever be too big to fail, as United were during the ghost-ship years, when it didn’t matter how badly you treated this thing, money still came pouring in through the portholes.

It doesn’t feel like that now. United have £113m annual losses. The newly roided-up Champions League has entirely left them behind. There is a sense for the first time that maybe some things really do get lost, that no mega-brand is an island. And really, this might be good for everyone. This club has semi-failed for long enough, still pumping out cash even as the Glazers shaved a little more of its mane every year. Maybe it needs to fail properly, to fail in a way that might finally hurt those who actually own it, not just those who will follow it wherever it goes.

It is self-evident that nothing really good can happen here until the Glazers are dislodged. It will take plenty of macro-turmoil before United finally becomes too cold to carry, not to mention a stream of sustained, cleansing failure along the way. If we’re clutching at straws, there does at least seem to be no shortage of that coming down the pipe.