Bond that tied Busby Babes to fans is a lost phenomenon

Players of Manchester United and Huddersfield Town line up for a minutes silence in tribute to victims of the Munich air disaster ahead of the Premier League match at Old Trafford last Saturday. Picture: PA.

Edwards was Manchester United’s best player, some would have him the best Old Trafford has seen, the babe of Babes. He rented a room at No 19 and ate his meals with the family. There was no baby Bentley in the drive. There was no baby Bentley. There was no drive. No need. Edwards could walk home after the match and still be in front of the radio in time to listen to the scores come in on the BBC.

The degrees of separation between the lost lives we commemorate on the 60th anniversary of the Munich air disaster, and the footballing experience of today are many, of course, but none perhaps as arresting as the bank deposits of today’s poster boys. If you are looking for a way to explain the becalmed atmosphere at Old  Trafford of which United manager Jose Mourinho often complains, start here.

When Edwards tucked into his beans on toast with the landlady, he and his adoptive family ate from the same table, materially and metaphorically. The rupture of those two elemental parts that made football what it was, player and fan, leads directly to today’s silent spectacles at OT.

United were a community project central to the identity of Manchester when Sir Matt Busby set out on those pioneering European trips, which, through the tragedy of Munich, would come to define the club. Mourinho’s appeals for more noise are essentially an expression of yearning for a connection that no longer exists.

As today’s great chronicler of all things United, Andy Mitten, argues, the globalisation of the club, the process of expansion by which fans from five continents in selfie congress beneath the Holy Trinity statue at every home match, has brought riches to player and institution.

It has also cut the umbilical link to the Gorse Avenues of this parish and the days when it was possible to build a club like the one Busby wrought from the wreckage of the Second World War.

The warm glow of belonging is no longer a local phenomenon. Emotional attachment is claimed in 100 different languages, and layered in as many cultures. Articulating the common experience, indeed experiencing the thing that is common is so complex that appreciation becomes a thing bound to nuclear units within an extended family, instead of one big family bash.

It would not surprise to learn that some supporters are discovering the Munich episode for the first time on days such as these. That does not make their attachment to the club any less legitimate, rather it reflects the changing nature of the relationship between club and fan, how different the landscape when supporters take a flight home after the match rather than the bus.

History rightly demands that we mark these anniversaries in red ink, that we celebrate the key moments that give a club its identity, its life. Nostalgia demands that we warm our hands on the memories of times we imagine were somehow more intimate, happier and less complicated.

Football retains its fascination because in essence its core appeal remains the same. There is something hypnotically compelling about the background colours, the geometry of the play, the endless possibilities when skill and planning run four square into random bounces. And attachments are tribal.

What has changed are the terms of engagement, the way we relate to our teams, the nature of the experience for fan and player. Is it better or worse? A bit of both probably, leading me to speculate that Edwards et al would have loved a cut of the wages today’s heroes are packing, while Sanchez and co would happily pay a dividend for the love of the people felt by the Babes.