Paul Pogba and Bruno Fernandes teaming up to produce a goal and then running towards fans in an Indian stadium to celebrate: This unlikely scenario almost became reality in 2020.
The new Manchester United CEO Richard Arnold said in an interaction in 2020 that the club’s first team was scheduled to tour India that year. Covid-19 crashed that party, but a trip to India remains a goal for the club.
“Coming to India with the first team is a priority for us,” Arnold had told Shikhar Malhotra, Vice-chairman and CEO, HCL Healthcare, in a video series for the Shiv Nadar Foundation. “We actually had plans for this summer (2020) to visit on tour, obviously those had to change. That’s going to go back on the list. But it’s an important part of our plan to bring our first team to that part of the world.”
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Manchester United have not won a big title for a long time. The Champions League was last theirs in 2008. They haven’t won the Premier League since 2012-13, and are a low seventh in the current season, labouring on under stop-gap manager Ralf Rangnick. Cristiano Ronaldo is unhappy with the way things are going, and has reportedly had a meeting with Arnold about his grievances and the path ahead.
United’s agony has been compounded by the continued success of their neighbours Manchester City.
Yet, United remain a venerable institution. They have a long, rich history and worldwide loyalists. In 2012, Arnold, putting the squad’s appeal in context, had described it as one with “25 George Clooneys”. Their Indian supporters, he said, were an important part of the “big family” of approximately one billion global fans.
At the time of the interaction with Malhotra, Arnold was the group MD at Old Trafford. Now he has been elevated to CEO, in place of the outgoing executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward.
Arnold, 50, is a chartered accountant with experience in technology as well. Prior to Manchester United, he worked at Pricewaterhousecoopers (PWC), Global Crossing Europe and InterVoice.
“Accountancy was born out of uncertainty. I did not really know what to do at 21. It’s rare at 21 you know anything,” he said when discussing his career.
Nonetheless, Arnold said that accountancy “gave me an opportunity to see lots of different businesses, gave me a qualification, have transferable skills that allow you to pick and choose between different industry sectors.”
Technology, on the other hand, was something he always loved.
“My dad told me if you do something you love, you never have to work the rest of your life. I’ve always enjoyed technology. It was an important part of what I did in my previous two roles,” said Arnold.
At PWC, Arnold advised companies like Orange and MTN. Later, he worked for a company that owned many of the patents for Voicemail, SMS, etc.
“We did the messaging interface for the iPhone,” Arnold said.
When he joined United in 2007-8 as a commercial director, it was a case of applying whatever he had learnt in his previous jobs.
“The transferable skills, the business growing, the brand building, and also the use of technology in connecting to people on a very large scale, these were important skills in enabling me to move to Man Utd,” Arnold said.
Asked for tips on how to assert yourself when working with big names, Arnold gave a surprising answer: Most people assume larger than life figures have large egos. Arnold said this isn’t always true.
“One of the fascinating parts of working with some of the most amazing characters, [such as] Sir Bobby Charlton, Sir Alex Ferguson, great former players, great current players…what you find is people who are great succeeders in life tend not to have huge egos,” Arnold said. “They have big characters, big personalities, but one-on-one they are usually wonderful people. Manchester United chooses and develops players on that basis, remembering that everybody you are dealing with is a person, whether they are the most revered player of all time or the lady who makes the tea or at the reception. That’s the mindset I’d suggest people take when meeting people you have huge respect and awe for, not just footballers but some of the business people we come across, or the President of America. Yes, they have tremendous power and responsibility, but they are just people.”
Arnold said doing well at a sports organisation required the same skills needed to do well in any field. And that it is important to place the company over the self and think in the long-term.
“Many of the skills are exactly the same as everywhere else,” he said. “The planning, the discipline, the understanding of the standards you’re being held to by fans. And an understanding that you’re working for an organisation that’s bigger than the individual. And the final piece is that with [United having] over a 140 years of history, there’s a long list of people who had my job before I did. In 140 years’ time, someone will stand and look back at the quality of work I did, but that helps you put in context the decisions you take, making sure you are taking the right decisions for the long term rather than responding to short term pressure.”
Arnold signed off with a message for students and youth.
“As we are emerging out of an incredibly difficult period, the future is yours if you are young,” he said. “Hard work, resilience, refusal to lose, setting yourselves high standards, if you do that, and if you have the passion to enjoy every moment along the way, you can’t lose.”
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