MANCHESTER, England (AP) — Manchester United fans marched to Old Trafford to protest the club's ownership on Sunday in the face of ticket price rises, job cuts and onfield decline.
Thousands of supporters gathered for a pre-arranged demonstration ahead of the Premier League game against Arsenal, with lit flares and raised banners demanding a change of ownership at the record 20-time English champion.
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Manchester United's Bruno Fernandes, center, celebrates scoring his side's opening goal during the English Premier League soccer match between Manchester United and Arsenal at Old Trafford stadium in Manchester, England, Sunday, March 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Dave Thompson)
Manchester United co-owner Jim Ratcliffe, center, waits for the start of the English Premier League soccer match between Manchester United and Arsenal at Old Trafford stadium in Manchester, England, Sunday, March 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Dave Thompson)
A Manchester United fan holds up a sign with concerns to ticket pricing prior to the English Premier League soccer match between Manchester United and Arsenal at Old Trafford stadium in Manchester, England, Sunday, March 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Dave Thompson)
Manchester United fans protest against the club's owners, the Glazer family, prior to the English Premier League soccer match between Manchester United and Arsenal at Old Trafford stadium in Manchester, England, Sunday, March 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Dave Thompson)
Manchester United fans protest against the club's owners, the Glazer family, prior to the English Premier League soccer match between Manchester United and Arsenal at Old Trafford stadium in Manchester, England, Sunday, March 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Dave Thompson)
Fans were asked to wear black in “solidarity,” and they marched through the streets surrounding United's Old Trafford ground and up to the stadium before kickoff.
The protest, organized by fan group The 1958, came just over a year since British billionaire Jim Ratcliffe bought into the storied team and vowed to return it to the summit of European soccer.
Some fans chanted in protest against Ratcliffe, while others held up banners demanding the club's majority-owning Glazer family sell up.
Both Ratcliffe and director Edward Glazer were in attendance for the match.
Fans have long campaigned to drive out the American Glazer family, which also also owns the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Fans have been critical of the leveraged nature of the Glazers’ buyout for 790 million pounds (then about $1.4 billion) in 2005 that loaded debt onto the club.
Ratcliffe, a boyhood fan and owner of petrochemicals giant Ineos, paid $1.3 billion for an initial 25% stake in the club last year, but has overseen a turbulent period of major cost cutting and record underperformance on the field.
United said last month that up to 200 roles would go in a latest round of cuts, following the loss of around 250 last year.
Managerial great Alex Ferguson's lucrative ambassadorial role will also go at the end of the season, while United raised its lowest-priced tickets to 66 pounds ($81) partway through the campaign, up from 40 pounds ($49).
On the field, United is languishing in the bottom half of the standings after 12 losses in the league, following its worst ever Premier League campaign last term. The second-tier Europa League is its only chance of silverware this season and a route back into the Champions League.
One banner read: “RIP FAN CULTURE.”
Fan group The Red Army posted on X that “we should all get behind these protests, once our fan culture has been destroyed, there’ll be nothing left worth fighting for.”
Supporter and author John Ludden wrote in an emotionally worded blog that the Glazers and now Ineos were operating “ignorant of what they represent”.
Inside the stadium a banner was raised that read: “Stop exploiting loyalty.”
Even after United took the lead through a first-half goal from captain Bruno Fernandes, cheers were quickly followed by chants of “Glazers out!”
United did not comment on the protest when contacted by The Associated Press.
The match ended 1-1.
James Robson is at https://twitter.com/jamesalanrobson
AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
Manchester United's Bruno Fernandes, center, celebrates scoring his side's opening goal during the English Premier League soccer match between Manchester United and Arsenal at Old Trafford stadium in Manchester, England, Sunday, March 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Dave Thompson)
Manchester United co-owner Jim Ratcliffe, center, waits for the start of the English Premier League soccer match between Manchester United and Arsenal at Old Trafford stadium in Manchester, England, Sunday, March 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Dave Thompson)
A Manchester United fan holds up a sign with concerns to ticket pricing prior to the English Premier League soccer match between Manchester United and Arsenal at Old Trafford stadium in Manchester, England, Sunday, March 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Dave Thompson)
Manchester United fans protest against the club's owners, the Glazer family, prior to the English Premier League soccer match between Manchester United and Arsenal at Old Trafford stadium in Manchester, England, Sunday, March 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Dave Thompson)
Manchester United fans protest against the club's owners, the Glazer family, prior to the English Premier League soccer match between Manchester United and Arsenal at Old Trafford stadium in Manchester, England, Sunday, March 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Dave Thompson)
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Protesters for and against the Trump administration's latest immigration crackdown clashed in Minneapolis on Saturday as the governor's office announced that National Guard troops had been mobilized and stood ready to assist state law enforcement, though they were not yet deployed to city streets.
There have been protests every day since the Department of Homeland Security ramped up immigration enforcement in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul by bringing in more than 2,000 federal officers.
A large group of protesters turned out in downtown Minneapolis and confronted a much smaller group of people attending an anti-Somali and pro-Immigration and Customs Enforcement rally. They chased the pro-ICE group away and forced at least one member to take off a shirt they deemed objectionable.
Jake Lang, who organized the anti-Islam and pro-ICE demonstration, appeared to be injured as he left the scene, with bruises and scrapes on his head. He said via social media beforehand that he intended to “burn a Quran” on the steps of City Hall, but it was not clear if he carried out that plan.
Lang was previously charged with assaulting an officer with a baseball bat, civil disorder and other crimes before receiving clemency as part of President Donald Trump’s sweeping act of clemency for Jan. 6 defendants last year. Lang recently announced that he is running for U.S. Senate in Florida.
In Minneapolis, snowballs and water balloons were also thrown before an armored police van and heavily equipped city police arrived.
“We’re out here to show Nazis and ICE and DHS and MAGA you are not welcome in Minneapolis,” protester Luke Rimington said. “Stay out of our city, stay out of our state. Go home.”
The state guard said in a statement that it had been “mobilized” by Democratic Gov. Tim Walz to support the Minnesota State Patrol “to assist in providing traffic support to protect life, preserve property, and support the rights of all Minnesotans to assemble peacefully.”
Maj. Andrea Tsuchiya, a spokesperson for the guard, said it was “staged and ready” but yet to be deployed.
The announcement came more than a week after Walz, a frequent critic and target of Trump, told the guard to be ready to support law enforcement in the state.
During the daily protests, demonstrators have railed against masked immigration officers pulling people from homes and cars and other aggressive tactics. The operation in the deeply liberal Twin Cities has claimed at least one life: Renee Good, a U.S. citizen and mother of three, was shot by an ICE officer during a Jan. 7 confrontation.
On Friday a federal judge ruled that immigration officers cannot detain or tear gas peaceful protesters who are not obstructing authorities, including while observing officers during the Minnesota crackdown.
During a news conference Saturday, a man who fled civil war in Liberia as a child said he has been afraid to leave his Minneapolis home since being released from an immigration detention center following his arrest last weekend.
Video of federal officers breaking down Garrison Gibson's front door with a battering ram Jan. 11 become another rallying point for protesters who oppose the crackdown.
Gibson, 38, was ordered to be deported, apparently because of a 2008 drug conviction that was later dismissed. He has remained in the country legally under what’s known as an order of supervision. After his recent arrest, a judge ruled that federal officials did not give him enough notice that his supervision status had been revoked.
Then Gibson was taken back into custody for several hours Friday when he made a routine check-in with immigration officials. Gibson’s cousin Abena Abraham said Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials told her White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller ordered the second arrest.
The White House denied the account of the re-arrest and that Miller had anything to do with it.
Gibson was flown to a Texas immigration detention facility but returned home following the judge's ruling. His family used a dumbbell to keep their damaged front door closed amid subfreezing temperatures before spending $700 to fix it.
“I don’t leave the house,” Gibson said at a news conference.
DHS said an “activist judge” was again trying to stop the deportation of “criminal illegal aliens.”
“We will continue to fight for the arrest, detention, and removal of aliens who have no right to be in this country,” Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said.
Gibson said he has done everything he was supposed to do: “If I was a violent person, I would not have been out these past 17 years, checking in."
Associated Press writers Steve Karnowski in Minneapolis, Josh Boak in West Palm Beach, Florida, and Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina, contributed.
Garrison Gibson, a Liberian man who has lived in the U.S. for around three decades, shows reporters his shirt reading “Immigrants make America great” during a news conference Saturday, Jan. 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Jack Brook)
A Jake Lang supporter clashes with counterprotesters the March Against Minnesota Fraud rally near Minneapolis City Hall, Saturday, Jan. 17, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
Jake Lang, center, who organized the protest March Against Minnesota Fraud, clutches his head as he leaves the rally near Minneapolis City Hall, Saturday, Jan. 17, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
A Jake Lang supporter bleeds from his head as he is chased away by pro-immigration protesters Saturday, Jan. 17, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
A pro-immigration protester lifts up Jake Lang's vest after an altercation at the March Against Minnesota Fraud rally near Minneapolis City Hall, Saturday, Jan. 17, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
ADDS IDENTIFICATION: Garrison Gibson becomes emotional as he is arrested by federal immigration officers Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/John Locher)
ADDS IDENTIFICATION: Teyana Gibson Brown, second from left, wife of Garrison Gibson, reacts after federal immigration officers arrested Garrison Gibson, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/John Locher)
Federal immigration officers prepare to enter a home to make an arrest after an officer used a battering ram to break down a door Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/John Locher)
Garrison Gibson, a Liberian man who has lived in the U.S. for around three decades, shows a photo of his arrest on a t-shirt as he speaks with reporters during a news conference Saturday, Jan. 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Jack Brook)
Garrison Gibson, a Liberian man who has lived in the U.S. for around three decades, speaks with reporters during a news conference Saturday, Jan. 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Jack Brook)
