Manchester is at the heart of a possible bid for the north of England to host an Olympic Games in the 2040s, seeking to dispel the old notion that only London could do it; and Manchester is central to Burnham\u2019s desire to bring a men\u2019s World Cup to Britain for the first time since 1966.<\/p>\n
City\u2019s Etihad Stadium home will soon expand to a capacity of over 60,000, while United have acquired land to build a 100,000-seat successor to Old Trafford that their co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe has called the \u2018Wembley of the North\u2019. The Etihad will host five games during the 2028 men\u2019s European Championship and is part of the bidding to host the Women\u2019s World Cup in 2035, while United have previously expressed a desire for their planned new stadium to host the final of that competition if it is played in the UK.<\/p>\n
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\n Manchester United\u2019s Old Trafford stadium will host the derby against Manchester City on Sunday (Mark Cosgrove\/News Images\/NurPhoto via Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Both clubs played men\u2019s Champions League football again this week,<\/a> with City winning 2-0 away to Portuguese side Porto and United beating Sabah of Azerbaijan 4-0 at Old Trafford.<\/p>\n Manchesterism will, to a large extent, always be footballism too. There is a reflex reaction to saying Manchester in any part of the world, where a person used to respond with \u2018United\u2019 but now sometimes will answer with \u2018City.\u2019<\/p>\n But the story Manchester is telling now is not only of football but a city of optimism and of possibility, where people believe good things may happen.<\/p>\n In short, Manchester is back \u2014 and it wants the world to know it.<\/p>\n \u201cManchester is the bit of England that most obviously had a contemporary renaissance,\u201d says Jonathan Reynolds, the UK\u2019s secretary of state for business, innovation, science and trade, in a phone call on Friday. \u201cThere are lots of parts of this country where people feel uncertain about the future of their area, or feel the best days are behind them. Manchester doesn\u2019t have that; it has this exciting feeling, \u2018We\u2019re doing things\u2019. It is looking to the future.\u201d<\/p>\n The numbers are striking.<\/p>\n Manchester\u2019s economy has disproportionately outperformed the UK across a decade, tracking 3.1 per cent annual growth<\/a>. Most visually striking has been the development of the city centre, a place that housed just a few hundred people at the turn of the 1990s but is now home to more than 100,000, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service<\/a>.<\/p>\n A report earlier this year forecast Manchester to become Europe\u2019s fourth-tallest city by 2030<\/a>, bringing it the nickname \u2018Manc-hattan\u2019. A 76-storey tower, which will largely consist of luxury homes and a hotel, received planning approval last year, and will be the tallest residential building in Europe.<\/p>\n The number of people moving from London to Manchester outpaced those who head south seeking opportunity and prosperity, according to the latest official internal migration data. It is also a thriving university city, a place where graduates increasingly see not only somewhere to study but also to make a life afterwards.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a reason why Chanel asked us if they could do their catwalk in the Northern Quarter,\u201d says Bev Craig, Burnham\u2019s successor as mayor of Greater Manchester. \u201cThere\u2019s a reason why the Brit Awards moved themselves out of London for the first time in their 50-year history and still saw a rise in their global viewing figures. There\u2019s a reason why the NBA chose Manchester to sit alongside Paris and Berlin when it comes to hosting a regular-season game in January.\u201d<\/p>\n \n Manchester\u2019s Northern Quarter hosted Chanel\u2019s Metiers D\u2019Art Show in December 2023 (Stephane Cardinale\/Corbis via Getty Images)<\/p>\n Quite what Manchesterism is, or ought to be, may differ depending on who is asked the question.<\/p>\n To Burnham, it refers to the transfer of power from London to cities and regions across the country, in the belief that those working on their own doorstep are more likely to have a clearer sense of the area\u2019s needs, hopes and anxieties than politicians cocooned in the capital\u2019s Palace of Westminster. It taps into a resentment that has developed in cities around the UK where people wonder why they, too, should not be afforded the type of integrated transportation system afforded to Londoners. It also ties into people craving pride in their place.<\/p>\n \u201cWe use the identity of what it means to be a Mancunian to bring about social change but also bring economic opportunity,\u201d Craig tells The Athletic.<\/p>\n Dan Jones, a football finance analyst and former head of the sports-business group at Deloitte, adds: \u201cManchester was once one of the richest cities in the world, famous as Cottonopolis during the Industrial Revolution. But then came deindustrialisation and decline in the 1970s and 1980s. What we have seen now is a resurgence.<\/p>\n \u201cManchesterism is defined by a dynamism and a can-do attitude. It\u2019s a demand from the city and a trust in the city, with some central government, to say, \u2018We know the city well, we are ambitious, we want to get the best for our people, give us the room and the support to do it\u2019. Support doesn\u2019t mean handouts. It means, \u2018Devolve and let us crack on with it\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n Craig adds: \u201cManchesterism is deeper than any kind of caricature that we are just into Oasis, bucket hats and football.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet the football element is undeniable.<\/p>\n United\u2019s brand, and a swathe of musicians, held the city up as the world globalised. But the sports-led regeneration of Manchester was turbocharged when Sheikh Mansour, the vice-president and deputy prime minister of the United Arab Emirates, acquired City in 2008. Speaking this week on The Athletic FC podcast, City\u2019s then chief executive Garry Cook recalled the pitch made to their eventual Emirati owner.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were selling an investment in the Manchester economy,\u201d Cook recalled, \u201cnot only a football team that was going to play every weekend at 3pm. It was a very different proposition, all built off this new global media product of the Premier League.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u201cSir Howard Bernstein and Sir Richard Leese, who ran the city council, were using football and sport to leverage and grow their city. They applied to get the Olympic Games in 2000 and didn\u2019t get it. They got the Commonwealth Games in 2002, which turned into a stadium (where City now play their home matches), which turned into new ownership.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was the perfect storm of property development, politics and economics all working together, but at the very heart of it in Manchester are two football clubs.\u201d<\/p>\n These days, stadiums are often described as 365 days-per-year ventures, with clubs seeking to optimise revenues beyond the couple of dozen football matches hosted on the premises each season.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve got a number of restaurants that will be open year-round,\u201d says Danny Wilson, City\u2019s managing director of operations, in a phone interview this week. \u201cThis will include a market hall \u2014 home to five independent local food and beverage operators.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve got a new three-storey retail store with Puma. We have office space we\u2019re looking to let out to a private tenant. We have got a space called City Hall which will be a hospitality area on matchdays, but it\u2019s a space also created for third-party conferences and events to come in to do exhibitions, conferences and product launches.<\/p>\n \u201cThe NBA is coming to the arena (the indoor, 23,500-capacity Co-Op Live next to the Etihad). There\u2019s the Brits (music awards at the same venue) in February. There could be an ice rink in there for the month of December. We could do small-scale community health, fitness and wellbeing sessions. We\u2019ve got a roof walk, a zip wire across the pitch and an abseil to give people a reason to come down outside of those matchdays. We\u2019ve got Mamma Mia! (the immersive dining and entertaining experience) coming.\u201d<\/p>\n Manchester does not have all the answers. It has continuing challenges with rough sleeping, which Burnham pledged to end when entering office as mayor in 2017 but has risen four years in a row, according to The Mill<\/a>.<\/p>\n There also remains a 115-ton elephant in the room, as City\u2019s Abu Dhabi ownership has not been without its challenges. The world forever awaits a verdict on whether the club, who have repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, will be punished for 115 alleged breaches of the Premier League\u2019s financial regulations.<\/p>\n The local council has also been accused by academics at the University of Sheffield<\/a> of providing Abu Dhabi with a \u201csweetheart\u201d deal for public land, which they argued allowed the investors to disproportionately benefit. Former City CEO Cook does not hide that his early presentations to Abu Dhabi included discussions about the corridor of property development to join the city of Manchester to the stadium further east.<\/p>\n \n East Manchester has been transformed since the 2008 takeover at Manchester City (Mark Cosgrove\/News Images\/NurPhoto via Getty Images)<\/p>\n Local politicians argue the investment worked for Manchester. Others question whether too much latitude has been afforded to the UAE, a country with a highly-criticised human-rights record.<\/p>\n Business secretary Reynolds says: \u201cI remember the accusation that the Manchester leadership sold the city to Abu Dhabi, and as someone who has lived in the city for 20 years or more, I look to that with disbelief.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you look at New Islington (a central area of Manchester), there was a social-housing estate there that people abandoned properties on \u2014 they did not want to live there. Now it\u2019s one of the most sought-after places with families and young professionals. It\u2019s that investment that\u2019s made the area more desirable. The economic positivity of that is very clear.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not our job to be salespeople for Gulf countries, but the UAE is an incredibly stable, prosperous place with quite a lot of legitimacy for the people who run it. There are some countries where, frankly, with some of the oligarchs, you\u2019d be really questioning whether you\u2019d want the kind of relationship Manchester\u2019s had with the UAE. But the UAE is the third-biggest British diaspora now of anywhere in the world, where a lot of British people are working and going on holidays, too. I don\u2019t see it as some sort of unpleasant thing.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Models](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/GettyImages-1838835372-scaled.jpg\")
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