It wasn’t quite the reception Peter Draper had in mind when he tried to persuade a sceptical American audience — commercial partners, media, fans — that Manchester United were “like the New York Yankees, the Chicago Bulls and the Dallas Cowboys all wrapped into one”.
Two years earlier, United’s players had been mobbed on arrival in Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Bangkok. Draper, the club’s marketing director at the time, used to say that, with “Beckham-mania” at its height, it was “like The Beatles going on tour with Michael Jackson”.
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Yet here they were, touching down for the start of their trail-blazing tour of the United States in July 2003, to an air of total indifference.
To the concern of those of us who had flown across the Atlantic to cover United’s bid to “crack” America, the welcome committee at Portland International Airport was maybe half a dozen, and maybe not even that.
Sir Alex Ferguson and his players were greeted by the gregarious figure of Charlie Stillitano, who had organised the tour as part of the ChampionsWorld Series — “and I remember we got this police escort into town, from the airport to the team’s hotel downtown, and there was absolutely nobody on the roads,” Stillitano says with a laugh.
“We walked in with zero security. There was a wedding at the hotel and there were more people for the wedding than for us. It was not like when I’d been with them in Asia, put it that way. No one in Portland noticed.”
These days a pre-season tour of the U.S. feels entirely normal — not just for United but for Arsenal, Chelsea, Borussia Dortmund, Juventus, Real Madrid and numerous other clubs who are heading Stateside this summer. Even Brentford are doing it. Even Wrexham. Well, why not?
But 20 years ago, Draper and the rest of the Old Trafford hierarchy saw America as football’s final frontier, boldly going where no Manchester United team had gone before.
A slight exaggeration, of course; United had visited the U.S. in the 1950s and 1960s, as had other clubs, and again in the late 1970s and early 1980s. But for years, pre-season tours had revolved around Europe and the odd one-off game in Asia. The commercial drive of the late 1990s was built around the Far East, playing to fanatical crowds. It wasn’t about spreading the gospel. It was about preaching to the converted and, to borrow one phrase of the time, “turning fans into customers”.
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Going west was a different matter. Even at that point, nine years after USA 94, seven years after the launch of Major League Soccer, trying to break into the American market was a new experience, a serious test of United’s appeal.
They were going to need some sprinkle, some stardust — and that wasn’t going to be as easy as they had imagined when they signed the contracts a few months earlier.
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Outside the team’s hotel in Portland was a newsstand. On the newsstand was a copy of Men’s Journal magazine. On the front of the magazine was the man they were calling “the most famous athlete in the world”. The sub-head asked, “Can David Beckham conquer America?”
Not on United’s behalf, he couldn’t. Beckham had been sold to Real Madrid a few weeks earlier following the collapse of his relationship with Ferguson, who had tired of the England captain’s celebrity and the media circus surrounding him — unfortunate timing, given that publicity was exactly what the club wanted in the U.S..
With Beckham on the way out, Ferguson had wanted two star signings to improve his team’s creativity: Harry Kewell from Leeds and, even more excitingly, Ronaldinho from Paris Saint-Germain. But Kewell accepted a higher offer from Liverpool — to Ferguson’s disgust — and the early optimism surrounding Ronaldinho faded over the course of three months as negotiations with the Brazilian’s representatives and club hit one obstacle after another.
Just when United seemed on the verge of a breakthrough in talks with PSG, Barcelona (whose new president Joan Laporta had been frustrated at seeing Beckham opt for Madrid) emerged as favourites to sign Ronaldinho. United chief executive Peter Kenyon and his deputy David Gill had spent a fraught 24 hours trying to secure a deal before flying to Portland.
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“They had been negotiating (with PSG) all through the night,” Draper says. “They were the last to board and they were bleary-eyed. They told us it was looking like the Ronaldinho deal was off.”
That news was confirmed when they touched down in Portland 11 hours later. It was a huge blow — most obviously to Ferguson’s plans but also to the excitement surrounding a tour for which the Brazilian, a Nike ambassador as well as one of the most marketable stars in world football, had been earmarked as a star attraction. No Beckham… and now no Ronaldinho either.
“Becks was a star and when you have a star — a star star — everyone wants that guy, the way they now want Cristiano Ronaldo or (Kylian) Mbappe or whoever,” Draper says. “But we still had Ruud (van Nistelrooy), (Roy) Keane, (Ryan) Giggs, (Paul) Scholes and so on. It was always going to be the Manchester United tour, not the David Beckham tour. But there was disappointment that we had missed out on Ronaldinho. There was probably more kerfuffle about that.”
As it was, United’s only new faces were American goalkeeper Tim Howard, newly signed from MetroStars, and young French forward David Bellion. On arrival at the team’s training camp at Nike HQ in Beaverton, Howard declared that United’s players would be greeted “like rock stars” in America.
Nike had been a driving force behind the tour, having signed a huge and wide-ranging £303million, 13-year deal with the club earlier that year. They, too, were banking on United making it big in America.
For 20-year-old midfielder Danny Pugh, it was an eye-opener. He recalls being bowled over by the “unbelievable” training facilities at Nike HQ — “another level to what we were used to at Carrington” — and at being given vouchers to spend at the Nike shop.
During those few days in Portland, the “rock star” experience was somewhat lacking. “I remember Scholesy saying they could walk around freely, whereas in Thailand, Malaysia etc, it was the total opposite,” Draper says.
A group of them went to a Fleetwood Mac gig and, again, they were able to blend into the crowd. “I wouldn’t have been recognised anyway,” Pugh says with a laugh. “But the top players all said it was nice to be able to be able to do normal things that they couldn’t normally do on tour.”
It was a double-edged sword, though, and it was impossible to escape the feeling that United would have been getting an awful lot more attention if Beckham had been there. Not that he was a household name in the U.S. — he had just been rejected for a cameo role in The Simpsons’ 300th episode because executive producer Al Jean said he was “not really famous enough” — but the England captain brought a media spotlight that United were struggling to capture without him.
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Ferguson had no intention of inviting headlines by discussing the matter. The travelling press pack’s attempts to engage him on the subject were repeatedly rebuffed, so imagine our delight when, on the eve of United’s first tour match, a local reporter stood up in the press conference and asked him if he had “any words for the soccer fans in Seattle who expected to see David Beckham tomorrow”.
Ferguson’s eyes narrowed. “I have no words at all,” he said.
There were times when Stillitano questioned what on earth he was getting into.
Last seen as general manager of the MetroStars in Major League Soccer, he had staked his reputation and a lot of money on ChampionsWorld, bringing five European clubs (United, Celtic, Barcelona, AC Milan and Juventus) to the U.S. for a series of exhibition matches that also included Club America and Boca Juniors.
“No one believed in it,” says Stillitano, now a consultant to this summer’s Soccer Champions Tour. “I remember going to MLS and saying, ‘Would you guys like to be partners in this?’ They didn’t want to. MetroStars likewise. I had to put a second mortgage on my house. I felt like I was on my own out there.”
Even when, almost unbelievably, tickets for United’s game against Celtic in Seattle sold out within 60 minutes, Stillitano felt something could go wrong. What if, even after buying these tickets months earlier, no one showed up?
And then on the evening of July 22 2003, everything he had dreamed of became a reality: a crowd of 66,772 in Seattle, the biggest for any sporting event since the spectacular Seahawks Stadium opened a year earlier.
“The feeling I had, looking at that crowd in Seattle, was the same feeling I had at the 1994 World Cup,” Stillitano says. “Partly relief and feeling, like, ‘F***, we actually pulled it off’. And partly just this sense of awe, seeing the teams come out, looking around and seeing this huge crowd.
“Some of them would have been new to soccer and some of them were silly soccer guys like me, kids of immigrants who followed European soccer from all the way over here. Now it was like they could reach out and touch their heroes.”
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Among those awe-struck fans was Josh Mallinger, who had fallen in love with United while watching Eric Cantona in the 1990s without ever imagining Ferguson would bring his team to Seattle.
To that point, his supporting experience had revolved around the George and Dragon — “an English pub that opened in the mid-90s, and if you were an English expat or an American soccer fan in Seattle, that was the place to go and watch the Premier League,” he says.
“There was a handful of us who were dedicated Manchester United fans who would go there every week, maybe 15-20 Americans plus a number of expats. And I would say all of us were at that match against Celtic.”
Some of the crowd that day had travelled from far and wide — from Manchester, Glasgow, Ireland, all over America’s Pacific coast and beyond — but many others were locals whose curiosity had been piqued by this strange sport being played on their doorstep.
There was plenty of support for Celtic, as there always is in countries with large Irish communities. They had played in the UEFA Cup final a couple of months earlier and had Stiliyan Petrov, Chris Sutton and Henrik Larsson in their ranks. But they were swept aside as United ran out 4-0 winners.
The best word to describe the atmosphere that night in Seattle is “warm”. Not hot, as it can be on the spiciest occasions back home, or delirious, as it could be in Asia, but certainly appreciative.
As for the man who wasn’t there, there were a group of girls wearing T-shirts that said “David who?” and “Beckham what?” There was even a banner which, bastardising a famous film title, said “Bend it like Neville”.
There was a slight sense of embarrassment when the most celebrated of English footballers was enthusiastically introduced to the crowd as “Sir Bobbyyyyyy… CARLTON!” But, other than that, the evening felt perfect.
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“I had the manager (Ferguson) and Sir Bobby walking out on the field afterwards and I’m like, ‘Is he going to be upset that the field isn’t perfect or it’s not Old Trafford?’” says Stillitano. “But he walked over and smiled and said to me, ‘This is magnificent.’”
On a high, Stillitano decided to crack a joke about Beckham’s absence. A brave thing to do now, never mind in the summer of 2003. But Ferguson and Charlton, he said, “fell down laughing”. It was that kind of evening.
Next up was Los Angeles and, after the exhilarating high of Seattle, a bit of a comedown.
Perhaps, more than anything, it came down to scheduling. Whereas United’s other three matches were evening kick-offs, the game against Club America, of Mexico, took place on a baking hot Sunday afternoon. As Draper puts it, “the beach must have been very enticing.”
The section behind one goal was left empty, but a reported attendance of 57,365 still sounded positive even if many of the locals, naturally, were far more interested in the Mexican team.
With United cruising towards a 3-1 win, some of the Club America fans, either bored or angry, started throwing missiles. A few stormed the barriers and invaded the pitch before being led away by police to the sound of jeers. Briefly, it was more like English football in the 1970s.
“The bayonets join the action!” yelled the commentator on Fox Sports World. “And, of course, if we were in Europe, we’d be showing it. But here in the States, we don’t condone such tomfoolery.”
Many first-time visitors to L.A. struggle to get to grips with the place — its size, its sprawling nature, its very different neighbourhoods with very different vibes — and United didn’t quite do so either. They won on the pitch, but struggled to make much of an impression in Tinseltown.
The local sports pages were full of LA Lakers star Kobe Bryant, who a week earlier had been charged with sexual assault. United barely got a look-in.
Roy Keane was not in the mood to hang around after the game. He was desperate to catch Bob Dylan, who was performing nearby that evening, so a people-carrier was on stand-by to take him and a select few team-mates to the Pacific Amphitheatre in Costa Mesa. One team-mate recalls Keane telling them they were about to be “educated”.
Most preferred to go to a party laid on by one of the club’s commercial partners. Keane was disgusted.
That old line about New York still carries as much resonance as it ever did. “Make it there,” Draper says, “and you’ll make it anywhere.”
If Ferguson and his players had appreciated the training-camp aspect of the first week in Portland and Seattle, then New York was where the commercial department would get their money’s worth, which meant putting the United brand — and, by extension, their sponsors — front and centre.
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Kenyon rang the bell to signal the start of trading on Wall Street; Giggs and Charlton visited the memorial garden at Ground Zero; Ferguson and a group of players went to the United Nations to meet Kofi Annan and celebrate the £1million (then $1.6 million) the club had raised for the UNICEF charity; Scholes led a coaching clinic for local youngsters after an open training session at Rutgers University; another group went for a photoshoot, training with the Manhattan skyline as a backdrop.
There was also a media junket on a scale that Ferguson would never have tolerated at home.
“The manager didn’t really like that side of things, whether it was in Manchester or New York, so we had to tread a fine line between giving him and the players the space they needed and making it work for the commercial partners and promoters,” Draper says.
“But he understood that. I’m sure he felt a bit grumpy at times, but he loved the training facilities wherever he went, especially at Nike, where he was surrounded by all the history and all the imagery of Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, Bo Jackson and so on.”
And the American journalists loved the idea of Howard, born and raised in New Brunswick, New Jersey, making his first appearance for United against Juventus in front of a sell-out crowd at Giants Stadium. Howard was only 24, straight out of MLS, but he had already made such an impression in training that Ferguson suggested the American might start the season as United’s No 1 goalkeeper. Sure enough, he did.
The atmosphere at Giants Stadium was different again — louder and more passionate, whether the support was for Howard, United, a star-studded Juventus team or simply for the spectacle, which was compelling, with Ferguson’s team winning 4-1.
Two things stick in the mind from the match itself. One was a Diego Forlan miss which, in front of an open goal, caused gasps of horror from the crowd.
The other was the performance of Juan Sebastian Veron, who, having struggled to hit the heights expected of him in two seasons in Manchester, had looked like following Beckham out of the club, with Chelsea interested.
That night against Juventus, the Argentina midfielder produced perhaps his best performance in a United shirt, the highlight being an outrageous assist for a stunning Van Nistelrooy goal.
A couple of days earlier, Ferguson had told reporters Veron would be staying despite Chelsea’s interest. The player’s display against Juventus seemed to hint at a new start. But that was to be his United swansong. A week later, he was indeed sold to Chelsea, where he made little impact before moving on again.
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“I remember on that tour Veron got a standing ovation on the training field, where he scored this ridiculous goal and everyone just stopped and clapped him, which doesn’t happen very often,” Pugh says. “His ability was never in doubt, but his performances didn’t quite get to the level they could have done, given his talent.”
It was… (guessing) around 3am. Quite late to be out when you’re reporting on a match the next day, but hey, we were young and we were on tour in Philadelphia. Don’t judge.
A few of the journalists were in a Brazilian bar and, through something of a haze, they thought they saw a familiar-looking figure. That’s not… Ronaldinho, is it?
It could be because Barcelona were in town, playing United in the final game of the tour. But it couldn’t be because there is no way he would be out at 3am, the night before a game for his new club. But it could be because… well, because Ronaldinho, basically.
And on closer inspection, bloody hell, it was.
The Guardian’s Daniel Taylor, now of this parish, and the Daily Mirror’s David McDonnell went over — first to ask if they could have a photo and second to see if they could get him to shed any light on his decision to join Barcelona rather than United.
He was obliging enough with the first request and the picture is faithfully published below. The interview? Let’s just say that even if Ronaldinho had felt ready to bare his soul to a couple of English reporters in a bar at 3am, the language barrier would have been insurmountable.
The next day we wondered whether he could possibly be playing against United that night. After a (minimum) 3am finish? Surely not. But there he was, lining up against the team whose advances he had spurned. And as Stillitano puts it, “everyone had this vision of Roy Keane kind of taking him out.”
In the event, Keane gave Ronaldinho a smile and a handshake — as did Ferguson at half-time. United struggled to get to grips with Ronaldinho in the early stages as the Brazilian set up Patrick Kluivert for the opening goal. But they recovered, winning 3-1 thanks to two goals from Forlan, making up for his aberration in New Jersey, and one from Van Nistelrooy, before basking in the warmth of another sell-out crowd.
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Incidentally, this was the first match played at Lincoln Financial Field. Five weeks before the Philadelphia Eagles hosted the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the opening NFL game at their home, with Sylvester Stallone whipping 67,772 fans into a frenzy, an even bigger crowd (68,396) watched United take on Barcelona.
Post-script: from Philadelphia, the United squad flew to Lisbon, where they faced Sporting in a friendly to open the new Estadio Jose Alvalade. A little jet-lagged, perhaps, they were torn to shreds by an 18-year-old — and while the players flew back in awe of their opponent, Kenyon stayed behind to finalise a £12.24million deal to sign him immediately. At last, United had their heir to Beckham’s famous No 7 shirt — even if Cristiano Ronaldo took a while to grow into it.
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Four games in America, four wins, three sell-out crowds… and one delighted marketing director.
“It was ground-breaking,” Draper says. “By the time we finished, we said, ‘We have to come back — and we can’t leave it another 20-odd years. And we went back the next year.”
But that one back-fired. With the European Championship finals only just finished, the Copa America underway in Peru and the Olympic tournament in Athens to follow, United travelled Stateside in 2004 with a depleted squad — no Rio Ferdinand, Scholes, Van Nistelrooy, Ronaldo or any of their South American players.
In their opening game against Bayern Munich at Soldier Field, Chicago, the only ‘names’ in the United line-up were Keane and, to a lesser extent, Alan Smith. Illinois native Jonathan Spector, making his first appearance in United colours, was introduced to the crowd as “Phil Spector”, which was at least a more recognisable name than Phil Bardsley or Paul McShane. Long before the end of a dismal 0-0, a restless crowd had started booing.
“This was supposed to be my falling-in-love-with-soccer day,” wrote Greg Couch in the Chicago Sun-Times. “We were here to see a higher level of sport that might make us fall in love with the game. (But) oh, God, was this awful. It was just a bunch of guys running around in the middle of the field or standing around. This is not going to win over any Americans.”
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Ferguson would not normally be swayed by public or media opinion. He had wanted those players involved in the Euros to be eased back into training but, wary of jeopardising the goodwill built up a year earlier, he summoned reinforcements. The Neville brothers, ever willing, flew out for their second tour match against Celtic in Philadelphia. Mikael Silvestre and Scholes followed for the third against Milan in New Jersey.
“The boss didn’t need to do that,” Stillitano says. “We were already sold out at Giants Stadium — that wasn’t a problem — but some journalists were killing Manchester United and that resonated with him.”
United’s contrasting experiences underlined what Ferguson had previously argued: that while these pre-season tours brought benefits in an odd-numbered year (which meant fewer international tournaments), flying long-haul in a World Cup or European Championship year was problematic.
“But that seems to have gone by the wayside now,” Draper says. “Everyone is prepared to jump on a plane every year now.”
It’s true. Between 2003 and 2019, United went long-haul every year, touring the U.S. again in 2010, 2011, 2014, 2015, 2017 and 2018. The Covid-19 pandemic disrupted their plans in 2020 and 2021, but then it was Thailand and Australia last year and now they are back in New York, ready to kick off another tour against Arsenal at the MetLife Stadium on Saturday, before heading to the west coast to face Wrexham in San Diego, inland to take on Real Madrid in Houston, then west again to face Dortmund in Las Vegas, all before further warm-up matches in Manchester and Dublin.
“We changed the whole concept of pre-season,” Stillitano says. “Not just the idea of touring but the idea of playing big games against your rivals.
“I remember Frank Rijkaard (then in charge of Barcelona) saying he didn’t want to play against the best teams in the world in pre-season. He said we’ll be seeing coaches fired before the season starts! But it makes sense. It’s what people want to see. And the boss (Ferguson), Jose Mourinho, Carlo Ancelotti and all these guys loved the competitive element.”
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Arsene Wenger railed against it for years, arguing that a proper pre-season training camp should be precisely that — ideally at altitude in the Alps, coming down every few days to play a local team — rather than a gruelling long-distance itinerary, always in hock to the commercial department and the sponsors.
“For years we couldn’t get Arsenal to tour,” Stillitano says. “But the teams that were doing it — Manchester United, Chelsea, Barcelona, Madrid, whoever — were successful. In the summer of 2009, we had Inter and Chelsea. At the end of that season, Inter won the Treble and Chelsea won the Double.”
Sometimes clubs get it wrong. During their time at United, both Louis van Gaal and Jose Mourinho felt there was too much emphasis on commercial work on visits to America. There is a balance to be struck.
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What has changed above all is the sums involved.
In 2003, United’s four-match tour earned them made around $2.5million in appearance fees. Draper feels they were “a couple of million dollars up” once costs were deducted, “which won’t sound like a lot, but it’s not about the appearance money. It’s about the exposure for the club and its commercial partners, which is worth a great deal more.”
This summer? United declined to put a number on it, citing contractual confidentiality, but analysts estimate the tour will earn between £15million and £20m in direct revenue, including appearance fees and shares of ticket and broadcast revenue. ESPN has bought the American rights to screen all four of United’s tour matches — and the sums will be very different to 2003, when Stillitano says it felt like ChampionsWorld was “buying air time” to get on Fox Sports World.
On top of that is the long-term value of continuing to build the club’s brand in the U.S., where United now have 21 supporters clubs, including all four of the cities they visited 20 years ago. Meanwhile, NBC report that 1.92million people watched their live coverage of United’s match at Arsenal in January, a record American audience for a Premier League game.
Even with their fortunes on the pitch suffering a downturn in the past decade under the Glazer family’s ownership, they remain the pre-eminent English club in the market, which leaves the feeling that there is still so much scope for growth.
Over the past two decades, Stillitano has seen the phenomenon of the American pre-season tour grow and grow.
This summer’s Soccer Champions Tour involves Real Madrid, Barcelona, AC Milan, Juventus, Arsenal and United. The Premier League has launched its own “Summer Series” with Chelsea, Brighton, Fulham, Brentford, Newcastle and Aston Villa featuring in nine matches, held across Philadelphia, Atlanta, Orlando, New Jersey and Maryland.
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It can look hostile, European clubs planting their flag in MLS territory. But Stillitano points out that Atlanta and Charlotte, the cities that have seen the league’s highest average attendances so far this season, hosted high-profile tour matches before they were awarded MLS franchises.
Then he casts his mind back and wonders how many fans in Seattle and Philadelphia, which didn’t have MLS teams back then, were bitten by the soccer bug in that balmy summer of 2003.
And it goes back to something Draper said at the time about how, beyond the hype about “the New York Yankees, the Chicago Bulls and the Dallas Cowboys all wrapped into one”, nobody was seriously expecting to “crack America” in one summer. “It’s a long-term venture,” he said, “where we hope to reap the rewards over a long period of time.”
It is an ongoing process not just for United but for most of their Premier League rivals, for Real Madrid and Barcelona, for Juventus and Milan, for Bayern and Dortmund, even for Wrexham these days. Twenty years on from their low-key arrival in Portland, United know exactly what to expect in the U.S. this time.
But so do their rivals. It is a crowded marketplace now — just as they hoped it would become when they blazed a trail two decades ago.
Additional reporting by Daniel Taylor
(Top photos: All Getty Images)
