Manchester United fans attempted to disrupt the Champions League match against Roma on Tuesday by throwing tennis balls onto the pitch at Old Trafford.<\/p>\n
United was 2-0 down inside 18 minutes, but the protest had been pre-planned and flagged on social media earlier in the day.<\/p>\n
It ended up causing only a brief delay, with just a small number of balls being thrown from the Stretford End and quickly removed by players.<\/p>\n
The protest was nothing like as disruptive as a similar demonstration by Celtic fans last year when trying to bring about a change in their club’s hierarchy.<\/p>\n
United supporters have long-tried to force regime change at their club with numerous protests against American owners the Glazer family.<\/p>\n
Minority owner British billionaire Jim Ratcliffe has also come in for criticism in the face of the club’s on-field problems and increased ticket prices.<\/p>\n
(Photo by Lewis Storey\/Getty Images)<\/span> <\/p>\n Ratcliffe, the owner of petrochemical giant INEOS, assumed control of the soccer operations after buying an initial 25% stake for $1.3 billion in 2024. Since then the 20-time English champion has fired two coaches, while Michael Carrick’s position is under intense scrutiny after a troubled start to the season.<\/p>\n The Glazers have been unpopular among fans since their leveraged buyout of the club in 2005.<\/p>\n The protest was timed for 21 minutes to mark 21 years of the Glazers’ ownership.<\/p>\n United went into Tuesday’s game on a nine-game winless run and was quickly behind against Roma when Matias Soule struck after 11 minutes.<\/p>\n Seven minutes later, Donyell Malen made it 2-0 with a penalty.<\/p>\n Reporting by The Associated Press.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" POPULAR SEARCHES BROWSE BY Manchester United fans attempted to disrupt the Champions League match against Roma on Tuesday by throwing tennis balls onto the pitch at Old Trafford. United was 2-0 down inside 18 minutes, but the protest had been pre-planned and flagged on social media earlier in the day. It ended up causing only […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7492,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-soccer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7493\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}