Man Utd chief Omar Berrada sets Prem title target, sees Pep Guardiola in Ruben Amorim and says ‘the worst is behind us'

The Sun

5 hours ago

MANCHESTER UNITED CEO Omar Berrada has doubled down on the club's three-year aim of winning the Premier League by 2028.
The former Manchester City and Barcelona chief revealed he sees Pep Guardiola in Ruben Amorim and has promised a new dawn at Old Trafford for the fallen giants.
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But whether or not United follow the trend of getting worse-and-worse each year since Sir Alex Ferguson 's retirement remains to be seen.
Four days after losing the Europa League final to Tottenham in Bilbao, the Red Devils recorded their worst-ever Premier League season on record by finishing 15th in the table.
But despite finishing 25 points closer to the drop zone than the Prem summit, Berrada insisted owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe's 'Project 150' target of reclaiming the title by the club's 150th anniversary celebrations in 2028 are more than just an aspiration.
Berrada told United We Stand: "Can the team win the Premier League title by 2028? Of course. I firmly believe we can do it.
"We have two or three summer windows to build a team to start competing to win the Premier League.
"Nobody is saying we don't want to win it until then. We're setting ourselves a target with a specific time frame to go and aim for.
'It's establishing a series of targets within a timeframe so we can focus our efforts and energy on that goal.
"We've just finished 15th and it seems an impossible task. But why not aim for it? Why not do everything in our power?"
Berrada, who moved across Manchester at the start of 2024 after 13 years filling several senior executive roles at the Etihad club, cited Guardiola's first season at City as evidence to back Amorim.
City finished third, 15 points adrift of champions Chelsea, in 2016-17, including a 4-0 thrashing at Everton and a last 16 exit to Monaco in the Champions League.
Asked if he saw similarities with Amorim, Berrada said: "Very much so. It was difficult in Pep's first year.
"He didn't win anything and there was suspicion about whether he could implement his football vision. People said he was arrogant and wouldn't change his style of play.
"But Pep stuck to his principles and given what he'd won, he had an enormous amount of credit in the bank. He was allowed that first year to be below-par by his standards.
"The club backed him that summer, the team started winning and created this winning cycle that lasted until this season.'
"It won't be easy. There'll be some difficult moments ahead. Nothing is going to get solved with one summer window, but we are on the right path."
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After finishing third in his first season in England, Guardiola led City to a historic season in 2017/18, losing just two games all season en route to 100 points.
But Guardiola walked into a much more stable situation at Man City, compared to Amorim's mid-season horror show at United.
Amorim, who lost 14 of his 27 Prem games, replaced Erik ten Hag in November when Man Utd were 13th, but only five points off Champions League qualification spots.
Berrada did acknowledge that making an appointment midway through the season was always likely to make it 'even more difficult for the team to perform".
He added: "We saw it as an investment for the following seasons, because we were going to give time to Ruben to get to know the squad, the club, the Premier League.
"We have a very clear roadmap of how we're going to get there. Had Ruben started on July 1, 2025, we wouldn't have been able to have all that knowledge, right?
"And that's what I feel these seven or eight months that he's had. He's suffered, and the team has suffered. That's why I feel that it's really going to help us in the future."
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Meanwhile, Berrada also wants United's women's team to win their first Super League title by 2028.
When he arrived at Barcelona in 2004, the club was on the floor, lagging behind both Man Utd and Real Madrid commercially and even failed to quality for the Champions League.
But within two years, the Catalan club were European and Spanish champions in 2006 and soon became that famed "prime Barca" side.
And two years later in walked Guardiola to manage Lionel Messi and Co. the glittering heights of world football.
Berrada added: "I firmly believe that we can do it. We have two or three summer windows to build a team to start competing to win the Premier League.
"And if we can achieve it before then, we'll all be happy — and so nobody's saying that we don't want to win it until then.'
"The worst bit is going to be behind us. We will have settled the management team and coaching team with the technical team around them.
'And on the football side, there's a clear idea of what we want to do, what players we want to get, how we want to see the team playing, how we're going to integrate academy players, how we're going to go and invest in future talent.
"We've put the worst part of this transformation phase behind us and now we're going to start building. I'm very confident we'll get back to the top."