MANCHESTER United are the best in the world, and the likes of Real Madrid, Benfica, Paris Saint Germain and Bayern Munich visit Old Trafford to listen and learn.
No, not Alex Ferguson's nightly dream but a daily reality. Of United's £60 million turnover last season, £23 million came from one, surprising source: merchandising - everything from replica shirts and videos to books and bedside lamps.
To put £23 million in perspective, we are talking a figure larger than the entire annual turnover of any Premiership club except Newcastle.
To give an idea of volume, United's magazine is, at 140,000 copies, the biggest-selling sports monthly in Britain. In Thailand it sells 40,000 copies a month in Thai. Its first print in Norwegian last month sold out 9,000 copies in a week. Soon it will be sold in Malaysia in Malay.
This is the language of serious devotion - of the fans to the club and of Edward Freedman to the art of making money. He is the Alex Ferguson of merchandising, the head of a department that has lifted its turnover from £2 million a year when he took over in 1991 to the top of the Premier League. And no other club is in sight.
"Someone who deals with all the clubs said to me recently that, if you likened it to a 100-yard race, the other clubs are five yards down the track and we're already through the winning tape," he says. "I may sound arrogant, but I'm not." What Freedman has done is take the merchandising concept by the scruff of the shirt and shake it for all it is worth. Manchester United Merchandising Ltd, of which he is managing director, sells more than 800 products through a 5,000 sq ft megastore - soon to be doubled in size and another of 3,000 sq ft, plus a mail-order division, a wholesale division supplying shops, and a licensing division.
For many of the game's romantics the merchandising concept is anathema. Mention replica shirts to them and they spit back "rip-off" and "exploitation".
Nonsense, argues Freedman. "People like to belong to a group and show their allegiance," he says. "So if there is a demand you give that demand what they want. But there is no way we exploit fans.
Exploiting is over-charging or selling poor-quality goods. United won't do that. I won't do that. Anything I don't consider good value, we don't sell.
"You can only rip a person off once, and we don't want to kill our market. Some people think supporters are stupid and will buy anything, but that's not true. One of the main reasons for our growth is we've given good value and good quality." And his defence of the frequent kit changes? "If supporters are bothered by them, why did we have such huge queues for the new red kit?" he asks. "And we could have put the price up to reflect our status as the country's top club. Other companies do; Levis are more expensive than other jeans. But we don't." He even believes that "one day there will be a demand for a kit change every year instead of two. Fashions don't last two years; people get fed up with a look very quickly.
A clause in the Umbro contract forbids him revealing how many replica shirts he sells, but it is an awful lot.
But merchandising is increasingly about more than shirts. Five years ago the percentage ratio between shirt sales and other sales was 80/20; now it is 40/60.
Still, other clubs struggle to see the light. They may show interest, come to see the set-up, but usually miss the point. "There are two clubs nearby who thought that because United have a huge store they wanted one. But it's not the size of the store, it's how you lay it out, what your product is, how your staff are. Those two clubs didn't think it through and theirs just don't work." It is the same with the magazine. "On the inside cover of one club magazine there was a picture of the chairman behind a desk smoking a cigar. Fans don't want that. The club's marketing manager agreed with me but he said: `I can't tell the chairman.' And there's the problem: too many chairmen are just in football for the ego.
"Ask them to gamble £1 million on a player and they sign straight away. But if they are asked for £500,000 to set up a proper merchandising operation to make the sort of money we do, they won't want to know." Never mind, United sell on, looking next to expand their overseas sales, which currently account for only five per cent of total turnover.
More merchandise, more money, but all for United. Freedman's operation made £3 million profit for them last year. "The football always comes first," he says. "Without that there is no brand to sell. Ditching the grey kit cost us a lot of money, but the manager and players didn't like it so financial considerations went out the window. And for the fans we've knocked £10 off the replacement shirt out next month.
"My main motivation is to make the most for Manchester United. The more money they get, the better the team and the ground." United may have been outclassed by Juventus, but only on the pitch.
