Manchester United F.C.

From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Manchester United Football Club is a football club that plays in England. It plays at Old Trafford Football Ground which is in Greater Manchester, near the city of Manchester.

The club is one of the most successful clubs in England. It has won the FA Premier League and Football League fifteen times. They have also won the FA Cup eleven times and the European Cup two times. It has more than 50 million supporters around the world. ^[1]More people come to watch Manchester United play than any other club in England.

[edit] History

The club started as Newton Heath (L&YR) F.C. in 1878. All of the team worked at Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway depot at Newton Heath. After nearly closing in 1902, J.H. Davies took over and changed the clubs name to Manchester United. Manchester United made Sir Matt Busby their manager after the Second World War. Matt Busby used the youth team to get new players, and this was very successful. The club won the Football League in 1956 and 1957. The success was stopped by the Munich air disaster in 1958. Eight of the club's players died. It was thought that the club might close, but it didn't, and won the football league in 1965 and 1967, and the European Cup in 1968.

The club did not do well again until the 1990s and 2000s, when Alex Ferguson became manager. He won the club eight league victories in eleven years, most recently in the 2002-03 season. In 1999, Manchester United became the only team to win the UEFA Champions League, FA Premier League and the FA Cup in the same season. The club had been a Public Limited Company since 1991, and an attempted takeover by Rupert Murdoch had been blocked by the British Government in 1999, but in 2005 Malcolm Glazer completed a hostile takeover of the club.