MANCHESTER UNITED stars were stopped from ever visiting the Glazer-owned Tampa Bay Buccaneers over fears of a MUTINY, it has been claimed.
The Red Devils have been owned by the Glazer family since an £800million ($984m) leveraged buyout in 2005, leaving the club with a huge level of debt.
The Florida-based American family are also the owner of NFL franchise the Buccaneers.
Man Utd have often toured around the US for pre-season, but have never been near Tampa.
However, it has now been revealed United were stopped from visiting their sister team over fears it would spark a player revolt.
ESPN’s Mark Ogden explained it was believed if players from United saw the training facilities in Tampa they would then rebel due to their own relatively poor facilities.
Ogden told the Football Reporters podcast: “I was told a story by somebody who worked at United, and it’s the elephant in the room that we haven’t really discussed: It’s the Glazers. It’s the Glazer family and their ownership of the club.
“I asked this person, I said, when United go to America, why do they never go to Tampa?
“Arsenal will do a link-up with the LA Rams or with whoever [owner Stan] Kroenke’s team are. Liverpool did it with FSG in Boston, they spent a lot of time there.
“United have never gone anywhere near Tampa, where the Tampa Bay Buccaneers that the Glazers own in the US (are).
“I was told it’s quite simply because the owners didn’t want the United squad to see how good the Tampa Bay facilities were.
“They didn’t want them to see the training ground because the training ground at Tampa is meant to be state-of-the-art.
[bc_video account_id=”5067014667001″ application_id=”” aspect_ratio=”16:9″ autoplay=”” caption=”Reasons to be positive under Ruben Amorim” embed=”in-page” experience_id=”” height=”100%” language_detection=”” max_height=”360px” max_width=”640px” min_width=”0px” mute=”” padding_top=”56%” picture_in_picture=”” player_id=”default” playlist_id=”” playsinline=”” sizing=”responsive” video_id=”6367381908112″ video_ids=”” width=”640px”]“The stadium is a top stadium. The Glazers have put a lot of money into the facility at Tampa and if the players had gone to Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ training ground and realised what they had and what United don’t have, there might have been a mutiny at the club.”
Tampa opened a state-of-the-art £57million ($70m) training facility in 2022.
Man Utd’s own Carrington training complex is finally undergoing some much-needed TLC of its own in a £50m project.
But this only came after the issue was highlighted by superstar Cristiano Ronaldo, claiming the club had not evolved since he first left to join Real Madrid in 2009.
In his infamous 2022 bombshell interview with Piers Morgan, he said: “The progress was zero. Since Sir Alex left, I saw no evolution in the club. Nothing had changed.
“He [Ferguson] knows better than anybody that the club is not on the path they deserve to be. He knows. Everyone knows.
“The people who don’t see that… it’s because they don’t want to see it. They are blind.
“I think the fans should know the truth. I want the best for the club. This is why I came to Manchester United.
“But you have some things inside that don’t help [us] reach the top level as City, Liverpool and even now Arsenal.
“A club with this dimension should be top of the tree, in my opinion, and they are not, unfortunately.”
The architectural team responsible for the new Wembley Stadium and Lusail Stadium in Qatar, Foster + Partners, is in charge of making the new facilities.
Over the summer, minority owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe said: “We want to create a world-class environment for our teams to win.
“When we conducted a thorough review of the Carrington training facilities and met with our men’s first team players, it was clear the standards had fallen below some of our peers.
“This project will ensure Manchester United’s training ground is once more renovated to the highest standards.”
However, Ratcliffe and his lieutenants now running the football operations at the club drew criticism as they decided to prioritise the men’s team by moving them into the newly-built women’s training facilities.
The women’s team were in turn moved into temporary buildings despite the £10m facilities being purposely built for them and the academy teams.
Figures revealed last year that the much-maligned Glazers had invested just £45m ($55m) of their own money into the club since their takeover two decades prior.
Meanwhile, 2021 figures revealed that more than £1BILLION ($1.23bn) had been lost by the club through dividends payments, interest payments and debt repayments.
And it was not until the arrival of the Ineos group that plans to upgrade the club’s stadium were finally put in place, with the plan currently torn between an Old Trafford upgrade or a new build.