Manchester United have announced exciting plans to build a new 100,000-seater stadium in an ambitious project that could cost around £2billion.
Rather than develop Old Trafford, the club will build a new stadium on land surrounding their existing home as part of a wider regeneration of the area.
United co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe has said he wants to build the “world's greatest football stadium” and images of what the stadium could like have given fans a glimpse into the future.
But when will the new United stadium be open?
London-based architecture firm Fosters + Partners have been selected to lead the project and the development could get underway as early as this year.
Scaled models and conceptual images for how the new Old Trafford and surrounding area could look like were revealed on Tuesday, and United say these will now provide “a masterplan for more detailed feasibility, consultation, design and planning work as the project enters a new phase”.
The plans form part of a wider regeneration of the Old Trafford area, which predicted to be the biggest such project in the UK since the transformation of the Stratford area for the 2012 London Olympics. Chancellor Rachel Reeves has already given government backing to the plans.
The exact start date for the project remains up in the air but United want the stadium can be built in five years.
In theory, that means it would be ready for the start of the 2030-31 season.
Ratcliffe said: "It depends how quickly the Government gets going with the regeneration programme. I think they want to get going quite quickly, they want to see progress in this term."
Sections of the new stadium will be constructed off site and transported along the Manchester Ship Canal.
Renowned British architect Lord Norman Foster said: “Normally a stadium would take 10 years to build. We halved that time, five years,' Foster said during the video.
“How do we do that? By prefabrication, by using the network of Manchester Ship Canal, bringing it back to a new life.
“Shipping in components, 160 of them, Meccano-like. And then we rebuild the Old Trafford station, and that becomes the pivot, the processional way to the stadium, welcoming and at the heart of a new sports-led neighbourhood.
“It's walkable, it's well-served by public transport. It's endowed by nature. It learns from the past, it creates streets. It's a mix-use mini-city.”
Regarding the financing of the project, United chief executive Omar Berrada added: "It's a very attractive investment opportunity so we're quite confident.”
