Manchester United Football Club is an English Premier League
football club which plays
at Old Trafford in Greater Manchester.
The club was formed as Newton Heath in 1878,
joined the Football
League in 1892 and has played in the top division of English
football
since 1938 with the exception of the 1974-75 season.
Average attendances at the club
have been higher than any other
team in English football for all but six seasons since
1964-65.
Manchester United are the reigning English champions, having won
the 2008-09 Premier
League. The club is one of the most
successful in the history of English football and has
won 22
major honours since Alex Ferguson became manager in November
1986. In
1968, they became the first English club to win the
European Cup, beating Benfica 4-1.
They won a second European
Cup as part of a Treble in 1999, and a third in 2008,
before
finishing runner-up in 2009. The club holds the joint record for
the most English
league titles with 18 and also holds the record
for the most FA Cup wins with 11.
Since the late 1990s, the club has been one of the richest in
the world with the highest
revenue of any football club, and is
currently ranked as the richest and most valuable
club in any
sport worldwide, with an estimated value of around £1.136
billion (Euro1.319
billion / $1.870 billion) as of April 2009.
Manchester United was a founding member of
the now defunct G-14
group of Europe's leading football clubs, and its replacement,
the
European Club Association.
Alex Ferguson has been manager of the club since 6 November
1986, joining from
Aberdeen after the departure of Ron Atkinson.
The current club captain is Gary Neville,
who succeeded Roy
Keane in November 2005.
