Inside story on Manchester United stadium project launch in London

“The second part of the request was that it had to have a really intense atmosphere,” Ratcliffe explained.

“And that the people in the stadium would be as close to the pitch as we possibly could achieve. So that means you’ve got relatively steep sides rather than flat sides. And we wanted an intense atmosphere because, at the end of the day, I think that’s worth points in the league because the more intimidating it is from the point of view of just seeing this mass of people and the sound, because it’s designed acoustically to reverberate, the better that is for the club.”

And thirdly, the answer to retaining identity came in the details. Several of them. For example, the choice to — as things stand — not create a retractable pitch, as done at Tottenham Hotspur and Real Madrid. “This is a football-first stadium,” the architect said. So, the priority is the quality of the pitch.

Or for another example, the degrees of steepness in the stands — 35.2, the maximum in UK regulations. Or in how current stadium landmarks might be used in the new ground. The current halfway line, for example, could be preserved beneath the walkway, and the old tunnel can be moved, too. Or in the concourses, where the architect said the ‘feel’ is helped by the materials used, in our case, brick and steel, to reflect Manchester’s industrial heritage, rather than the glass and concrete you might see at other grounds.