Manchester United’s Brilliant Trip to Los Angeles
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It started a few weeks into the pandemic. I was locked down (just like everyone else) and couldn’t watch live sports. I was becoming irritable and unsettled and desperate. So I went through the streaming channels, looking for old games I had never watched. After a couple of weeks of that, I found the Premier League, the top level of English football. I watched a team called Crystal Palace because I liked the name Crystal Palace, and I watched Liverpool, Manchester City, Aston Villa, and all the others. But the team I liked most was Manchester United. I wasn’t sure why, but the connection was instant and substantial and hard to shake. I was hooked. Then Marcus Rashford did his thing, and the hook went in even deeper.
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Marcus Rashford is a forward at Manchester United — and one of its biggest stars. But I wasn’t impressed by that. Something else got me. In the middle of the pandemic, Boris Johnson, the British prime minister, decided to end a program that gave food vouchers to poor kids. There was something mean and uncaring about killing such a program, especially during the pandemic. So Rashford wrote an open letter, which he sent out on social media, that called for the prime minister to keep funding the food vouchers. The public reaction was swift and strong in Rashford’s favor. Johnson made a u-turn a day or two later. The kids would get their food.
I was astounded. Because I knew, as a journalist and activist, that it’s nearly impossible to force a government to change anything that quickly. In fact, when I read about the u-turn, the wheels in my head got stuck for a moment. My brain refused to believe it.
So after Rashford did his thing, there was no question. Manchester United would be my team.
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Ever since then, I’ve been following Manchester United and the Premier League more closely than even baseball and the Los Angeles Dodgers, my favorite team since I was a kid. The Premier League games were exciting, the players were skillful, and the fans sang throughout the games with great voice. It was terrific.
After a few years of watching Manchester United on television, I became desperate again — I wanted to see them play in person. But I was always busy at work, and the trip to Manchester couldn’t be done in a couple of days, and it would be expensive. I figured I would never see, in person, Rashford or any other Manchester United player. Then I got the news: Manchester United were coming to Los Angeles, where I live, for a pre-season tour of America.
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I wasted no time in making arrangements. First, I bought a ticket for the game between Manchester United and Arsenal at SoFi Stadium, where the Los Angeles Rams play. Second, I reached out to the communications department at Manchester United. I figured there would be an open training session for reporters, and the communications people gave me the go-ahead to attend that. I was happy and excited and couldn’t wait.
On July 24, the team landed in L.A., and the open training session would take place a couple of days after that, with the Arsenal game on Saturday. Manchester United were training at UCLA, only a few minutes from my home. On a Friday afternoon, I drove over.
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It was hot and the sun was strong and the fans and reporters weren’t allowed to enter Wallis Annenberg Stadium. One of the reporters said the bus carrying the players was running late. So outside the stadium, on the UCLA campus, the reporters waited underneath the shade of a large, leafy tree. Twenty yards in front of us, in a zig-zagging line, the fans waited under very little shade. The fans were from all kinds of backgrounds and were all kinds of ages and were all kinds of nationalities and colors. It was the kind of thing I’ve always liked about sports, and many of the fans wore red jerseys of their favorite players: Rashford, 10; Rooney, 10; Beckham, 7; Fernandes, 18; Mainoo, 37.
As I stood with the reporters, I recognized many of their faces from Manchester United press conferences. It was another sign that I was hooked — I was always watching the press conferences. There was Laurie Whitwell from The Athletic; Andy Mitten from The Athletic and United We Stand; Jamie Jackson from The Guardian; Rob Dawson from ESPN; Simon Stone from the BBC; and Melissa Reddy from Sky Sports.
A group of YouTubers also stood with us. They had flown from England to L.A. to report about the pre-season tour to their subscribers. The YouTubers were diehard Manchester United fans, and I admired them. Because by starting up a YouTube channel, they had figured out a way to make money off their fandom. It was clever.
So Jay Motty, Joe Smith, Adam McKola, and Stephen Howson from Stretford Paddock stood with us, and so did Flex and KG from United View. I watched their channels often, and they produced entertaining videos, and they seemed to know what they were talking about, and they gave voice to the joys and frustrations of being a Manchester United fan. It’s why Stretford Paddock has more than 760,000 subscribers; Stephen Howson, who also has his own channel, has nearly 270,000 subscribers; and United View has 173,000. Webby & O’Neill, which has close to 73,000 subscribers, is another good fan channel.
Then I heard cheers. I was told the team bus had arrived, and the security guards said we could go in. I was happy and excited, but tried to play it cool. I am, after all, a journalist.
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Unlike me, the fans didn’t hide their excitement. They filled up the bleachers, which ran along one side of the field, and I could feel a bubbling anticipation. The reporters and YouTubers, who stood at field level to the left of the bleachers, played it cool like me. Then there was a big roar, and I turned my head, and the players ran out onto the field. Marcus Rashford, tall and solidly built, was among them.
So was goalkeeper Andre Onana, midfielder Casemiro, forward Amad Diallo, center-forward Rasmus Hojlund, midfielder Mason Mount, and a lot of younger players — midfielder Maxi Oyedele, center-forward Ethan Wheatley, and left-back Harry Amass were some of them. Nearly all the players wore blue shorts and blue, sleeveless training shirts, and they looked serious and focused and ready to work. The fans, on the other hand, looked delirious.
To warm up, the players took a light jog around the field. Erik ten Hag, the manager of Manchester United, watched and chatted with his assistants. Ten Hag’s from Holland. He’s fifty-four years old, and he was fit and trim with a shaved head and a light beard. He wore a white Manchester United baseball cap to protect his shaved head. Ten Hag’s top assistants, Ruud van Nistelrooy and Rene Hake, are also Dutch. From where I stood, and because of the noise by the fans, I couldn’t tell if the coaches talked in Dutch or English, and, for some reason, I wanted to know.
Then the players moved into drills, kicking the ball around. At one point, a coach yelled, “Come on, guys! Let’s get it together!” Another coach told the goalkeepers, “You’re still in the hotel, sleeping.” The players had flown eleven hours from Manchester to L.A., and they were dealing with an eight-hour time difference — by the time they ran onto the field at UCLA, it was one in the morning in England. But the coaches had no time for excuses. In only three weeks, on August 16, the Premier League’s season would kick off. The players listened to the coaches, and tightened things up.
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Ten Hag and his coaches then broke the players down into three teams, with two teams playing each other on a small field. The idea was to make things cramped so the players would be forced to make passes more quickly and accurately. The keepers, on either end of the field, protected their goals.
But the fans didn’t care about passing. They wanted goals. The fans held up their phones and took videos and waited for a ball to be kicked into the back of the net. And even though it was only a training session, the fans were concentrating just as hard on the action as the players were focused on passing and scoring goals. They were absorbed in everything that was taking place in front of them.
Stephen Howson, however, wasn’t happy. He held a microphone, with a video camera pointed at him, and appeared to be ranting. Howson is a British Army veteran and wears closely cropped hair with a beard and is built like a brick house. He’s known for his rants, and he can be funny — he tells a witty, unvarnished truth. During his rant, Howson turned to take a look at the field and saw a reporter and Joe Smith standing directly behind him, messing up his shot of the players. “Get the fuck out of the way!” he yelled at them, somewhat playfully. They moved a few feet to the left. Howson went back to ranting.
Over at the training session, the players were darting here and there, passing the ball here and there, and taking shots when they could. Whenever a player was about to take a shot, the fans would take a collective, audible breath and then cheer or moan if the player scored or not.
One thing I noticed was that the players kicked the ball hard, very hard. The players also banged into each other to gain an advantage, and they were always sprinting at or past each other. It wasn’t a safe place to be. If one of the fans was thrown onto the field, he or she probably would’ve ended up with a broken leg. And if the fan had the ball kicked at his or her face, and he or she didn’t duck in time, that person would be knocked out, maybe even end up dead. The same things could happen to one of the players if he wasn’t focused.
So with the players trying to avoid horrible injuries and sudden deaths, the fans started yelling out the players’ names, hoping they’d get a wave or a nod or any kind of acknowledgment, which was funny. Here were the players trying to make a living, and not get mangled or killed doing it, but the fans still wanted a wave.
Just above me in the bleachers, four kids, who were eight or nine years old, were relentless: “Rashford! Rashford! Casemiro! Casemiro! Rashford! Casemiro!” And on and on they went, for as long as the training session continued. They were thrilled to see their favorite players, but relentless. Rashford didn’t seem to mind. Later, in an interview, he said that it was good to play in front of the fans who couldn’t take a trip to Manchester.
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After another set of drills, the training session was over, and the players walked toward the fans and started clapping. It’s a standard thing that’s done at the end of a game. The players walk over to the fans and clap and acknowledge the fans’ support. It’s one of the nice traditions of English football.
Then Rashford, an obvious fan favorite, walked over to the stands to sign autographs. Suddenly, a mass of humanity flowed down the bleachers, taking positions along the front row. People were screaming, begging, yelling for Rashford. It would have freaked me out, but Rashford was poised and calm and started signing shirts and pieces of paper and anything else the fans could use for an autograph. The kids near me pulled off their jerseys for Rashford to sign.
After Rashford, other players walked over to sign things, and many of the fans kept begging, screaming, yelling: “Maguire! McTominay! Casemiro!” At one point, Ten Hag walked over to the bleachers, which caused as much clamor as Rashford giving signatures. A mother was so determined to get a signature for her boy that she told Ten Hag, “Please sign my son’s shirt. Someday he may play for you at Manchester United!” Ten Hag looked over at the boy and smiled and gave him a wink. The boy laughed, shyly.
A few minutes later, all the players were gone, and the security guards were telling people they had to leave. The people didn’t want to leave, but the guards weren’t going to let them stand around any longer. A few minutes after that, the bleachers were empty, the field was empty, and the reporters and YouTubers had all left.
I walked back to my car, and two fans spotted me. They were a husband and wife, probably in their twenties, and they had driven two hours from Ontario, California, to see the team. They both liked the fact that I got to stand near the players, and we chatted for a bit. I asked the husband if he liked the training session. He smiled wide and said, “It was the best experience of my life!” He turned around and showed me the back of his red Manchester United jersey. It was filled with autographs.
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Manchester United are arguably the biggest, most popular football club in the entire world. It’s not why I became a Manchester United fan, and I never care about that sort of thing, but the facts are the facts: Manchester United are worldwide.
The football club was founded, in Greater Manchester in North West England, in 1878. Thirty years later, Manchester United started to win big-time trophies: between 1908 and 1967, it won seven First Division Championships. In 1992, the First Division turned into the Premier League, one of the best, if not the best, football leagues in the world. Between 1993 and 2013, Manchester United won thirteen Premier League titles. No other club in England has won that many.
In all, Manchester United have won twenty English football titles. The New York Yankees, the winningest baseball team in the United States, have won twenty-seven championships.
Between 1909 and 2024, Manchester United also won the F.A. Cup thirteen times. The F.A. Cup, formally known as the Football Association Challenge Cup, is played in England, and it’s the oldest football tournament in the world. It’s also one of the most prestigious. Only Arsenal, a football club in London, have won more F.A. Cups than Manchester United. But Manchester United won the competition last season, with young stars Alejandro Garnacho and Kobbie Mainoo scoring goals.
Manchester United have won many other trophies, including three European championships. It won the European Cup, now known as the Champions League, in 1968, and then won the Champions League in 1999 and 2008. The tournament brings together the very best football clubs from England, Spain, Germany, France, Italy, and other European countries. So when a club wins the Champions League, it is often considered the very best football club in all of Europe, which means it is often considered one of the top clubs in the world.
For the 1998/99 season, Manchester United won the Premier League, the F.A. Cup, and the Champions League, an extremely difficult achievement known as “the Treble.” Until recently, no other team in England had done that — Manchester City pulled it off in the 2022/23 season.
The Champions League victory, in 1999, had an otherworldliness about it. Sir Matt Busby, one of the great Manchester United managers, won the European Cup in 1968 — exactly ten years after his squad had been decimated by an airplane crash in Munich, Germany. Eight Manchester United players had died, in 1958, and two could never play again. Fifteen other people were also killed. Decades later, in 1999, Manchester United were losing 1–0 in the last minutes of the Champions League final. A defeat was almost certain. But, out of nowhere, the team scored two quick goals: one by Teddy Sheringham in the 91st minute, another by Ole Gunnar Solskjaer in the 93rd. It was a miracle, but that wasn’t all of it. The club that Manchester United defeated was a club from Munich, Germany, and the victory took place on May 26 — if Sir Matt Busby had still been alive, it would’ve been his ninetieth birthday.
It’s been Manchester United’s winning, especially between 1993 and 2013 under the club’s other great manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, that made it one of the biggest, most popular football clubs in the world.
It also helped that Manchester United had many of the best, most exciting players in European football: Sir Bobby Charlton (he survived the Munich air disaster), Dennis Law, George Best, Bryan Robson, Paul Ince, Peter Schmeichel, Ryan Giggs, David Beckham, Eric Cantona, Roy Keane, Paul Scholes, Andy Cole, Dwight Yorke, Ruud van Nistelrooy, Rio Ferdinand, Cristiano Ronaldo, and, among many others, Wayne Rooney. Van Nistelrooy, who scored 150 goals in just 219 games for the club, is now an assistant manager at Manchester United.
With all that winning, and with all those legendary players, Manchester United now claim to have 1.1 billion fans around the world. That’s like adding up all the people who live in the United States, Brazil, Japan, Egypt, the United Kingdom, Italy, South Africa, and Canada. A mind-bending number.
In addition to the 26.5 million fans who follow Manchester United on TikTok, the 83 million fans following on Facebook, the 38 million fans following on X, and the 64 million fans following on Instagram, Manchester United has supporter clubs in Botswana, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, and many other countries in Africa. It has supporter clubs in Bangladesh, China, India, Japan, Nepal, and many other countries in Asia. It has three supporter clubs in Australia. It also has supporter clubs in Bahrain, Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, Qatar, and many other countries in the Middle East. And it has supporter clubs in Bermuda, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, the USA, and other countries in the Americas.
Manchester United also has more than thirty supporter clubs in Ireland. It has supporter clubs in Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Croatia, Finland, France, Gibraltar, Iceland, Luxembourg, Slovenia, Ukraine, and many other countries in Europe. And it has numerous supporter clubs throughout the United Kingdom.
If you travel anywhere in the world, there’s an excellent chance you’ll bump into someone who is a Manchester United supporter. Or, at the very least, you’ll meet someone who knows of Manchester United. The football club is, truly, worldwide.
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When you’re participating in something that has an extraordinary history going back to 1878, and 1.1 billion people from Africa, Asia, the Americas, the Middle East, and Europe are giving their love and loyalty to it, you’re actually involved in something that’s spectacular and holy. That thought hit me when I was driving home from UCLA. Each fan, each player, each coach of Manchester United is participating in a spectacular, holy thing that’s bigger than any one person. I was hit by another thought: we are, right now, representing all the people who came before us and made Manchester United what it is today.
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On Saturday, July 27, on another hot day, I drove down to SoFi Stadium, which looked like a giant spaceship. I parked in the stadium’s “pink zone,” walked over to the American Airlines VIP gate (and saw the United View guys looking for their gate), took a few escalator rides down to field level, walked through a tunnel, and then went over and down to my seat in section C113. I was eleven rows directly above the Manchester United bench. I had a good view of things.
I arrived an hour early so I could watch Manchester United warm up. Just as I sat down, Andre Onana, the goalkeeper from Cameroon, ran onto the field. Similar to the fans at UCLA, the crowd let out a huge roar. Onana clapped and motioned his hands for more. He was pumping up the crowd for his teammates, who ran out a minute or two later. The atmosphere became electric — I could feel a kind of buzz in the stadium. Onana seemed to feel it, too.
The team broke into shooting drills. Casemiro, the midfielder from Brazil, took a shot and scored. So did Rasmus Hojlund, who’s from Denmark. Ruud van Nistelrooy watched on from the middle of the field, nodding with approval.
Then the stadium announcer called out the starting lineup for Manchester United. He went through the names, and everyone got loud applause. Then Marcus Rashford’s name was announced. The cheers went up several decibels. No one on the team got the same response. It wasn’t even close.
In front of me, two young boys wore Rashford jerseys. They were excited and jumping up and down and one of them pointed at the field. I figured he was pointing at Rashford. It was amazing to me that Rashford had become, through his food vouchers stand, a hero not only for kids in England, but also for kids in the U.S. At SoFi, and at UCLA, I saw kid after kid wearing a Rashford jersey.
Rashford, though, is only twenty-six. He was only twenty-two when he forced Boris Johnson to do the u-turn. I wondered what it was like for him to be a global hero for kids. It’s got to be difficult — a lot of big expectations come with that kind of thing. On top of that, he must perform, at a top level, for arguably the biggest football club on the planet. The pressure, for most people, would be overwhelming.
But, at SoFi Stadium, almost ten minutes into the game, Rashford came through. It was 0–0, and Manchester United wore navy blue uniforms, and Rashford dropped back toward his goal, near the sideline, to take a pass from center-back Harry Maguire. Without stopping the ball, Rashford kicked it thirty or forty yards down field to Rasmus Hojlund. It was a quick, no-look pass. Something Patrick Mahomes, of the Kansas City Chiefs, would do.
The best passers in soccer, in fact, are just like the best quarterbacks in the NFL. They both have total, even freakish, vision of what’s unfolding on the field. Then they zip the ball in. On the dot. I once saw David Beckham play for the L.A. Galaxy. It was after his time at Manchester United. He kicked the ball around fifty yards, across the field, landing perfectly at his teammate’s feet. The teammate didn’t have to break stride, and kept on running with the ball. Beckham was like Brett Favre.
Rashford’s pass was almost as perfect as Beckham’s, and his vision was first-rate. Hojlund took the ball, pushed a defender away, and dribbled straight at the goalkeeper. The fans around me jumped out of their seats, cheered on Hojlund, and then Hojlund kicked the ball through the goalkeeper’s legs. Goal! Manchester United, 1–0. Rashford got the assist.
The Manchester United fans in my section went crazy. A young boy, behind me, was an Arsenal fan and stayed seated, looking shocked. A seat away, his friend or brother, who wore a Manchester United jersey and cap, pumped his fists into the air. The Arsenal fans in the section to our left just stared at us, looking glum.
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The good vibes didn’t last for long. First, at around thirteen minutes into the game, Hojlund sat down on the field. He was injured. Rashford stayed with him, tried to comfort him. A physio ran out, then Rashford walked over to the Manchester United bench. Someone asked him what was wrong with Hojlund. Rashford grabbed his hamstring. Hojlund got up and walked straight to the dressing room. Not good.
Then, twenty-five minutes into the game, Arsenal scored. Now the Manchester United fans sat in their seats looking glum. The Arsenal player was probably offside, but the goal still stood.
A few minutes after that, Lenny Yoro, a young center-back who had just signed with Manchester United, and who looked like a beautiful player, was taken off. I didn’t see it, for some reason. But I noticed Yoro wasn’t on the field after the water break. Then the announcer said someone had entered the game to replace Yoro. “Yoro’s gone?!” a guy behind me said. He sounded panicked. News came out later that Yoro had fractured a metatarsal bone in his left foot. He would be out for months.
No one else was injured before half-time. After the teams walked off, Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” was blasted over the stadium speakers. The Arsenal fans danced and sang along. The Manchester United fans around me weren’t as happy.
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For the second half, a completely new team was on the field for Manchester United, except for Andre Onana, the goalkeeper. It was made up of young players (Maxi Oyedele, Will Fish, Ethan Wheatley were some) and veterans (Jonny Evans, Christian Eriksen, Scott McTominay were part of that crew). No one else got injured, and the play was fine. Onana got the second loudest cheer of the day when he made a jumping save to stop Arsenal from scoring.
The fans were interesting. They didn’t sing throughout the game like the fans back in England, but they knew when to applaud for a good pass or robust tackle, and they knew when to boo the referee for a bad call, and they knew how to celebrate wildly for a goal. They understood football, and they enjoyed it. And a near capacity crowd came out to see Manchester United and Arsenal. 62,486 people. The only empty seats at SoFi were in the expensive sections. If those seats didn’t cost so much, the place would have been sold out.
Then the 80th minute came around. Arsenal scored again. It was the same routine: Arsenal fans jumping around, Manchester United fans sitting and looking glum — I couldn’t bear to look at the Arsenal kid behind me. Because we knew that Arsenal had probably won the game. Twelve minutes later, we were right. 2–1, Arsenal.
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We had the penalty kicks, though. We could still get some joy out of that. Normally there wouldn’t be penalty kicks, but it was a kind of treat to give to fans after the game. So we went into penalty kicks. Nearly everyone in the stadium stood up. Both fanbases were desperate for their team to win.
The main man for Manchester United was Andre Onana. He played some mind games with the Arsenal players, one or two of the Arsenal players didn’t like it, and Onana blocked one kick and forced a miss for another. During all that, the Manchester United players looked focused and determined and seemed to want to win as much as the fans.
Ethan Wheatley then came up for his penalty kick. He was a tall, good-looking player, but he was still a teenager. Only eighteen years old. Here was his chance to do something good for the team, to do something good for his career at Manchester United. A big moment.
Wheatley lined it all up, ran at the ball, and kicked it. Wide. Very wide. No goal. Wheatley’s face appeared on the massive video screen above us. He looked upset and disappointed. So upset and disappointed that Christian Eriksen, one of the veterans, walked up to Wheatley to console him. Wheatley appeared to not want consoling, and walked to the end of the line where his teammates stood in the middle of the field. I kept watching. Scott McTominay, another veteran, said something. Probably something to lift Wheatley’s spirits, knowing McTominay. That didn’t seem to take. Then Jonny Evans, the oldest veteran, walked over and seemed to gently console Wheatley. It was good to see. The veterans taking care of the kids.
A few minutes later, forward Jadon Sancho kicked the ball into the back of the net. Manchester United won the shootout, 4–3. The fans cheered as if the team had won the game. I was more happy about Evans looking out for Wheatley. We need more of that kind of thing, I thought. Looking out for each other, being gentle with each other, helping the young ones come through this crazy, hard world. I went home happy, and Manchester United left L.A. about a week later. Joe Smith, on Stretford Paddock, said the pre-season tour in America was “phenomenal” and “fantastic” and “brilliant.”
Read Patrick Range McDonald’s ground-breaking essay about the world-renowned artist Jean-Michel Basquiat: “A Visit with Jean-Michel Basquiat on His Birthday.”
