Manchester United FC

One of the most successful English teams of all time. A team that dominated the Premier League for nearly twenty years. One of the most well known global brands and badges anywhere in the world… United, Manchester United.

So let’s get to know their roots and #GetTheBadgeIn.

Before they were United, they were Newton Heath LYR—founded in 1878 by the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway depot just under three miles from Manchester city centre. Pre-Industrial Revolution, Newton Heath was mostly low-grade farmland, but it was swallowed by engineering, textiles, and coal mining. Two of its most famous firms were Avro, the aircraft manufacturer, and Heenan & Froude, the steel engineers behind Blackpool Tower. But its biggest export? Manchester United Football Club.

The Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway was one of England’s largest railway companies, running the busiest network in the country until 1922. One of its most striking legacies is still visible today—a spectacular glazed tile map of its routes at Manchester Victoria station, built into the war memorial. The club’s first home at North Road stood opposite the works, and they wore the company’s green and gold colours. The ground had a capacity of 12,000, no changing rooms (teams got ready in the Three Crowns pub), and a pitch often described as a swamp in winter, with the added charm of being regularly shrouded in steam from passing trains.

Newton Heath LYR’s earliest games in 1880 were against other railway sides, their first recorded match a 7–2 win over Blackburn Olympic reserves in 1883. Football’s shift to professionalism in 1885 saw Newton Heath sign paid players, but chasing competitiveness inflated wages and ticket prices, and finances spiralled. Hopes of joining the Football League in 1887 failed, and they instead became founder members of the Combination, then the Football Alliance, before finally joining the First Division in 1892.

In 1891, the club built two stands at North Road—without a penny from the railway company. The decision soured relations and in 1892, they severed ties with the L&YR entirely, becoming simply Newton Heath. The Diocese of Manchester, who owned the ground, disliked the club charging admission fees and hiked the rent, leading to repeated eviction attempts. By 1893, they relocated to Bank Street in Clayton, wedged between a railway line and a chemical works—described by the press as “a dismal, evil-smelling neighbourhood”—but it became home nonetheless, with new stands and terraces packed with thousands.

The club’s original badge featured a train in honour of its origins, but by 1891 it had evolved into a simpler coat of arms. Financial troubles lingered until 1902, when local brewery owner John Henry Davies rescued the club after an encounter involving then-captain Harry Stafford’s lost dog. With new investment came a new name—Manchester United—and a badge inspired by Manchester’s civic crest, complete with a merchant ship symbolising the city’s role in global trade during the Industrial Revolution. The three yellow stripes represented the Irwell, Irk, and Medlock rivers that fuelled its growth.

The Industrial Revolution transformed Manchester into Cottonopolis. The 1894 Manchester Ship Canal turned a landlocked city into a major port. Like East Anglia, Manchester’s textile trade was seeded by 14th-century Flemish migrants, but the Industrial Revolution, slave-produced cotton, and vast infrastructure projects like the canal turbocharged industry in the North-West.

Manchester’s turbulent and progressive history gives their badge—and especially the devil—an edge. The city helped inspire Marxist thought, with Engels and Marx meeting in Chetham’s Library, played a key role in the Suffragette movement, the birth of the Labour Party, endured the Peterloo Massacre, and survived Hitler’s bombing raids. Mancunians are made of tough stuff.

By the 1970s, the once-busy Manchester and Salford docks were in decline, losing traffic to east coast container ports like Felixstowe. The area decayed, but as Salford Quays it’s been reborn—now home to the Lowry, the Imperial War Museum North, and the BBC. Ipswich’s docklands could take notes from this 21st-century makeover.

Tragedy struck United on 6 February 1958, when the Munich air disaster claimed 23 lives, including eight players and three staff. Returning from a European Cup match, their plane crashed on its third takeoff attempt in Munich. This devastating event became a cornerstone of the club’s identity, uniting fans and the city in grief and determination.

The addition of the Red Devil to the badge in 1973—borrowed from Salford Rugby’s Les Diables Rouges—was embraced by Sir Matt Busby to project strength and resilience. Today it remains central to the club’s image, embodied by mascot Fred the Red. Some fans still lament the loss of the words “Football Club” in 1998, but United’s brand is so strong it hardly needs them. My only worry is the creeping trend toward minimalist crests—they might one day reduce it to just the devil, in the vein of Lincoln’s imp or their own stripped-back third kits.

United might not dominate as they did under Ferguson, and their noisy light-blue neighbours are the ones spending big now. But history suggests the Red Devils will rise again—after all, they’ve done it before, from swampy North Road and the smoky skies of Newton Heath to the world stage.Devils will rise again.