Man Utd hired Omar Berrada to take them back to the top – can he do it?

When Omar Berrada slipped quietly into the Old Trafford boardroom last July, he carried no fanfare, no grand unveiling and, most strikingly, no panic. Colleagues who spent 13 years with him at Manchester City say they never once saw him raise his voice or betray the slightest twitch of anxiety. In the febrile world of Premier League politics, that equanimity is already being tested to its limit.

United’s new chief executive, now 47, was parachuted in by minority owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe to do what the club has failed to manage since Sir Alex Ferguson retired: build a modern, winning machine. The early report card is mixed. Within 18 months Berrada has overseen the sackings of Erik ten Hag and, in January 2025, Ruben Amorim, while also parting company with sporting director Dan Ashworth after only five months. The combined bill for hiring and firing that trio stands at an estimated £37 million, excluding wages.

Yet those who know Berrada best insist the calm exterior masks a relentlessly demanding operator. Born in Paris to an economics professor and a UN worker, he spent his childhood in Rabat, Washington, Brussels and Barcelona. Polyglot and politically astute, he joined Barcelona in 2004 as head of sponsorships, overlapping with Pep Guardiola, before City lured him to London in 2011. Within four years he was commercial director, credited with transforming City’s revenue streams and, crucially, negotiating the Nissan deal that secured a 20 per cent stake in Yokohama F. Marinos. When the agreement appeared dead, Berrada flew to Japan and returned with a signed contract.

That forensic attention to detail, allied with an almost militaristic work ethic, is now being applied to United’s bloated structure. Insiders describe a man who sends lengthy voice notes at weekends, sets stretch targets and shows underperformers the door. “Everything was urgent,” one former City colleague recalls. “Under-performance was not tolerated.”

The challenge at United is exponentially larger. Ratcliffe tasked him with trimming costs after 250 redundancies in the spring of 2024. Berrada duly warned staff more pain could follow. He has since been forced to manage upwards through a labyrinth of overlapping hierarchies, balancing INEOS executives against United’s traditional power bases. Where City operated like a Silicon Valley start-up – “challenge the status quo” was office gospel – United are portrayed as entrenched, still living off commercial models built under the Glazers two decades ago.

Berrada’s sporting credentials rest heavily on his City Football Group tenure. As chief football operations officer from 2020 he centralised negotiations across a network that stretches from New York to Mumbai, working hand-in-glove with sporting director Txiki Begiristain. He handled the delicate courting of Erling Haaland’s camp, even inviting agent Rafaela Pimenta to work from City’s training complex for a week to close the 2022 deal. He also held the line on Harry Maguire in 2019, refusing to match United’s eventual £80 million valuation.

Whether that transfer acumen translates to rebuilding United remains the billion-pound question. Last summer’s arrivals – Senne Lammens, Matheus Cunha, Bryan Mbeumo and Benjamin Sesko – are being hailed internally as evidence of sharper processes under revamped data and scouting teams. Yet the decision to sack Amorim after 14 months, following a swift U-turn on ten Hag, has renewed scrutiny of Berrada’s football judgment.

Privately, City executives always assumed Berrada would succeed Ferran Soriano as CEO; instead he jumped ship to the neighbour they spent a decade trying to dethrone. The move stunned the Etihad corridors, though few blame him. “Few would turn down the chance to transform one of the biggest clubs in the world,” one former colleague shrugs.

For now, Berrada has the backing of Ratcliffe, who was introduced to him via an intermediary and emerged from a marathon first meeting convinced he had found the right man. Whether the softly-spoken executive, labelled “lab-grown corporate” by detractors, can morph into the visionary United crave will define the next chapter of English football’s most storied rivalry. The flapping, for the moment, remains strictly underwater.