Sindhunata's Football Notes: Manchester United Dark

Crisis. That is the disaster currently afflicting the football club Manchester United. Until 2013, under Sir Alex Ferguson, Manchester United was a football club that thrilled and amazed the world. Manchester United was synonymous with victory, in any match.

It is unimaginable, how could such a giant club, and always the king of the Premier League, the most prestigious football competition in the world, continue to plunge into crisis? Moreover, how could such a giant club not be able to immediately recover from its crisis, but instead sink deeper into a never-ending crisis?

MU's current target seems to resemble that of a mediocre club, one that has just been promoted from the Championship division and then struggles desperately in the Premier League merely to avoid slipping into the relegation zone. With this survival-oriented target, MU appears to erase traces of its history as a club that consistently occupied the upper echelons of English football.

"Every Sunday there is a new shock to MU," said former Premier League player and expert Rene Adler in a ZDF football analysis broadcast. Indeed, the latest shock was the result at Old Trafford, Monday (10/3/2025) early morning WIB. MU hoped to win. However, it turned out that at their home ground, they only managed to hold their guests, Arsenal, to a 1-1 draw. Old Trafford is no longer a haunted and frightening home for MU's opponents.

Since Ferguson stepped down, a succession of coaches has been brought in. David Moyes, Ryan Giggs (interim), Louis van Gaal, José Mourinho, Ole Gunnar Solskjær, Michael Carrick (interim), Ralf Rangnick, Erik ten Hag, Ruud van Nistelrooy (interim). All of them failed to ignite hope.

Finally, that hope was placed on the shoulders of Ruben Amorim. Yet, he also failed to demonstrate the ability to lead MU out of the darkness. In fact, after being defeated by Brighton, 1-3, last January, Amorim lamented, "Perhaps, we are the worst team in Manchester United's history."

When darkness falls, every step seems to go astray. Money might be available, but the player transfers are misguided. As narrated by Mark Ogden in his analysis on ESPN, since the beginning of the 2019-2020 season, MU has spent 776.2 million pounds sterling on player transfers. They aimed for Jude Bellingham but ended up with Donny van de Beek. Or Declan Rice, but got Casemiro. And, wanting Erling Haaland, they acquired Odion Ighalo.

Similar to the story a few years earlier. In 2017, José Mourinho was desperate to bring Virgil van Dijk from Southampton. Somehow, it turned out that the new player who signed the contract at that time was Victor Lindelöf. That's how it is, when the situation is dark, choosing and acquiring players becomes wrong.

In terms of player transfers, MU appears slower and less shrewd compared to Chelsea, Liverpool, and Manchester City. MU seems quite content with its old players. This gives the impression that MU is allowing its players to remain in their comfort zone at Old Trafford. However, in the highly competitive and intense English Premier League, anyone who is satisfied with their comfort zone will inevitably fall behind.

Under the legendary manager Sir Alex Ferguson, from 1986 to 2013, MU became a global football powerhouse, winning 13 league titles and two Champions League trophies. They shone even brighter thanks to their star players, such as Cristiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney, and David Beckham.

According to journalist Raphael Honigstein, Ferguson practically became the sole ruler at MU. It seemed that he did not need or allow other football experts to be beside him, let alone above him. What Ferguson left behind was glory. However, that glory will quickly collapse if it is not accompanied by structural support. That structure is what is missing at MU now.

It is possible that the structure used to exist, but it was fragile because it only depended on Ferguson's autocratic greatness. Once Ferguson's power was gone, his autocracy was gone, while there was no ideal structure to support it. As a result, MU plunged into the darkness of crisis.

Financially, MU is also struggling. In fact, it may be mismanaged in terms of management. Since the 2013/2014 season, MU has experienced a transfer deficit of 1.46 billion euros. The financial difficulties are among the reasons why they eliminated free lunch for their employees. Not only that, they even laid off 200 of their employees.

The crisis in MU's body may be a reason for us to understand Prof. Daniel Innerarity's review of what a crisis really is. Innerarity is an essayist and professor who teaches socio-political philosophy at the University of the Basque Country and the Ikerbasque Foundation for Science, Spain.

According to Innerarity, a crisis is a specific and temporary moment in which an institution decides to maintain its survival. The institution can take steps, or eliminate what caused the crisis, or try to restore it to its original state, or make changes for future survival.

In addition to institutional weaknesses, the crisis was mainly caused by external factors, such as natural disasters or epidemics. To recover from this kind of crisis, the possibility exists, and the opportunity is relatively large.

However, Innerarity said, more than that temporary crisis, there is a much more complex crisis. Unlike the crisis above which is temporary, and more external in its cause, this last crisis can actually no longer be called a crisis. This kind of crisis is what is now affecting most societies and countries in the world.

With the second understanding, he explained, if a society is hit by a crisis, it does not mean that the society is in crisis or infected with crisis, but rather that the society itself is a crisis that transmits crisis. This kind of crisis is not temporary, but almost permanent.

Eradicating it is not easy, in fact, it can spread incredibly fast. Understandably, the crisis is not a "virus" from outside that is infecting society, but society itself is the virus that spreads it.

A society in crisis is not actually being challenged to face the external causes of the crisis, but to overcome the “disease” caused by itself. In other words, the problem is not “coming from outside”, the problem is society itself.

In a crisis like this, it is easy to fall into haphazard solutions. The slogan "go back to the old or continue the previous one" will only plunge us into a deeper crisis. Because, "the old and the previous one" are actually part of or even the "virus" that caused the current crisis.

In such a situation, we must stay away from the word normality, or perhaps even stability. In fact, normality and stability have been eroded by the crisis and, if both are destroyed, it means that both are not strong enough to withstand the crisis. So, what is the point of searching for it again, maintaining it, and continuing it. What needs to be done is to make transformative changes and radical and large-scale changes to the way of life.

Faced with these challenges, systems such as autocracy or oligarchy will only make people suffer and sink deeper into crisis. Transformative challenges and changes to the way of life will only be achieved if all elements of society are included in a democratic process. What will happen and how to solve it, that is what must be thought about together.

We do not know whether Manchester United football club as an institution is suffering from a crisis in the first or second sense. Considering that they have not been able to get out of the crisis for years, perhaps they are in a crisis that is no longer temporary and external. Maybe they are facing a problem; and the problem is actually themselves.

In short, MU is in the dark. According to journalist Raphael Honigstein, the whole of England views the MU incident with mixed feelings, "grateful", horror, and a little pity. As for football analyst Mark Ogden, MU should be where they are, but they find themselves the ones who deserve to be blamed and mourned.

​For football fans and especially for die-hard MU fans in Indonesia, perhaps the MU crisis is the right trigger to critically ask why, by some of the nation's children, Indonesia is called dark? Why have problems come seemingly endlessly lately? Maybe as a nation we are suffering from a crisis, and the cause of the crisis is our own society, whoever they are or whatever their group.

Sindhunata, journalist