Manchester United are still aiming to have their new stadium built and ready to host the 2035 Women’s World Cup final.
It is more than a year since the club’s co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe unveiled grand plans for a 100,000-seater venue close to the site of their current Old Trafford home.
At the time, Ratcliffe spoke of trying to get construction down to a five-year timescale, which raised expectations about how quickly the project would begin.
However, as has been pointed out privately, at that point the club did not have the land to build on, the plans were not in place and there was no detailed business case.
The five years, in actuality, starts from the point at which United get the green light to put spades in the ground.
“We did say it would take between four and five years for construction,” Collette Roche, newly appointed by United as the chief executive of their New Stadium Development, told the club’s Inside Carrington podcast.
“People read that as we might have the stadium ready for 2030. But it does take one or two years to get ready for construction; to get the land assembled, to get the funds in place and to get the planning permission.
“That’s the part that we’re doing right now. We’ve not named a date for opening, but we are on track within those timescales.”
United sources had previously told Sport the aim was to host the 2035 showpiece. That private message has now been repeated as Roche told MUTV: “Our plan is to be able to host other international sporting events and entertainment events.
“Andy Burnham, the mayor, said his ambition would be for us to host the final for the Women’s World Cup in 2035, so if we could pull that off, that would be incredible.”