Following Manchester City’s victory on Saturday, Sunday looked to be a decisive day in the Premier League (PL) title race. Liverpool and Manchester United, historic rivals, were set to clash. If Liverpool won, Man City would clinch the title. If United won, they would live to fight another week, not yet mathematically out of contention.  

After hours of delays, by Sunday afternoon the game had been postponed to May 13. 

Roughly 1,000 Manchester United fans gathered the day of the game to protest outside the club’s home, Old Trafford, blocking the stadium entrance. Roughly 100 broke through barriers and climbed over walls, eventually making their way onto the empty field. About 200 protesters also appeared outside the Lowry Hotel, where the Man United players and coaches were staying, not allowing the team to leave for the game. 

The Greater Manchester Police’s statement on Sunday evening described escalating tensions. 

“Those in the stadium were evicted by officers but outside on the forecourt hostility grew with bottles and barriers being thrown at officers and horses,” the statement read. “Two officers have been injured with one officer being attacked with a bottle and sustaining a significant slash wound to his face, requiring emergency hospital treatment.”

The protests had been inspired by anger over the now-defunct European Super League (ESL) proposal, in which twelve clubs, including Man United, attempted to breakaway from some of soccer’s existing structures and form their own exclusive league. The ESL would have cemented financial and competitive inequality in European soccer. Fans largely objected to perceived excessive profit seeking at the expense of the club’s historic traditions, relationships, and competitive values. 

Like many protests, however, Sunday’s demonstration was an expression of both immediate concerns and deeper, longer-term grievances. A significant portion of the Man United fan base has been calling on owners Malcolm Glazer and his family to sell the club since the Americans bought it in 2005. The Glazers saddled Man U with hundreds of millions in debt as part of a leveraged buyout and annually took home large salaries that could be invested back into the squad or the aging stadium. Fans feel they do not invest enough in the squad and communicate poorly. Crowds protested in 2005 and they’re protesting now. Sunday’s demonstration came a week after protests over similar issues outside Arsenal’s stadium last week. 

As with any protest, it is difficult to make any blanket statements about the crowd. Many were calling on the Glazers to sell the club. Some demanded the institution of the 50+1 rule, a German policy which requires that fans be the collective majority owners of clubs. 

Some fans broke through barriers, got into the stadium, ran onto the field, and had tense exchanges with police. There were also people who brought their kids, clearly thinking the event was relatively safe and low-key. 

Apparently some protesters had a pre-planned scheme for breaking into the stadium. Others had clearly just showed up to offer support and sing some Manchester United songs. 

American sports fans are generally used to the idea that the franchises they support are national or global brands meant to make money, not represent their values and history. It’s common, for instance, for an owner to move a franchise to a new city. This is painful for fans and there may be some form of pushback, but there’s generally a feeling of resignation. Organized fan protests are rare in the United States, and when they occur they are usually a reaction to bad performances, not the business practices of owners. Such protests are much more native to English football and European football more broadly. 

This unfamiliarity has caused sections of American media to compare the Old Trafford protests to political or social protests. Naturally, when compared to the deep social issues that often spark demonstrations in the United States, disruptive protests over mere sports seem senseless. Property destruction during political protests, such as that which occurred during Black Lives Matter protests over the summer, might be considered incidental to the expression of legitimate grievances. Violence or destruction of any kind sparked by an attempted sports business decision, by comparison, seems absurd and unnecessary. 

This cultural gap helps to explain why so many American pundits (or pundits working for American companies) have characterized fans’ actions as “extreme,” “dangerous,” or deeming them “awful scenes.” In other words, it was a “riot,” a good cause allegedly taken too far into extremism and now undermining the message. 

Commentators reporting the breaking news on NBCSN, America’s Premier League TV rights holders, repeatedly used this language of criminality. Pundits alluded to hooliganism, the organized fan violence, generally perpetrated by young white men, which plagued English soccer in the 1970s and 80s and made stadiums unsafe.

Hooliganism itself was probably misunderstood, but that’s not what Sunday’s events were anyway. There was some minor violence and intimidation, but it was a legitimate protest. Violence was not the objective. Some fans got on the field and ran around. 

Commentators working for NBCSN were quick to condemn the Super League. And yet they became squeamish when a protest caused the cancellation of a PL game, the product they make money off of. The protests were largely about the Super League. Did they really care in the first place? 

With the notable exception of two of the PL’s most famous pundits, Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher, certain British pundits and writers condemned the demonstration, too. Even in a more familiar cultural context, not everyone will support protesters. 

Manchester United supporters, in this instance, are more likely than American sports fans to see their club as a communal institution, something shared and representative of who they are and where they belong, even in a league that has been run by billionaires. There’s far less acceptance that clubs should be treated like businesses designed to make money for shareholders. When that relationship is violated in such a serious way, fans get angry. They feel trapped. 

If people care deeply about something, but feel they haven’t been heard or cared for through normal channels, they react. They disrupt. When police are marched at them, violence becomes somewhat inevitable. 

While not endorsing the violence itself, American podcaster Elliot Smith articulately characterized the likely emotional state of protesters. 

“[This is] a group of people who have been locked away in their homes for a year, had their livelihoods impacted, had their social engagement reduced to basically a digital world where everything is more emotional and anger-oriented, and then this last fiber of something they really care about—someone attempts to cut that, and it feels like a last straw,” Smith said.

For more than a year, Premier League fans have not been able to watch their teams play live. Local fans in particular have felt emotionally disconnected from their clubs because they are physically disconnected. Sports are all about rituals: about taking the same train, going to the same pub, sitting near the same people, and singing the same songs. Whether a fan has been to a handful of games or is a lifelong season ticket holder, the relationships one can form with people and places are potent and unique. Without them, the game can feel empty and impersonal.

The disconnection between club owners and fans was amplified two weeks ago, when club owners were prepared to drastically change clubs and soccer’s institutions without consulting their clubs’ fans.  

Breaking into Old Trafford, then, is not necessarily a senseless act either, meant to express anger and nothing more. It can also be read as a form of reclamation. In sports, stadiums are the most natural place for a fan to express themselves. They can cheer, but they can also look up to the owner’s box and boo. Songs and banners can be loving and supportive or they can be challenging and confrontational. 

Certainly, too, there are many ways to protest. As mentioned, many in attendance at Old Trafford simply congregated and chanted safely. Others have intelligently begun divesting from Man U’s sponsors.  

Whether or not breaking into Old Trafford was “right,” it was understood by some in attendance to be the best and perhaps only option available to them. Unless the Glazers and would-be Super League owners like them are more responsive to fan demands, the anger will only escalate. 
Will Slater can be reached at wslater@wesleyan.edu.