A United Home: Stoke City '85. Looking back at Old Trafford on film.

Words: Tom Reed in conversation with Karl Hanssens.

Images: Karl Hanssens.

Football is the simplest of simple pleasures.

A ball, a couple of goals. Maybe some people to watch if you’re lucky.

The match lasts just an hour and a half, there isn’t another 90 minutes in the world that makes such an impact or leaves such memories.

Manchester United Football Club needs no introduction, they raised a Red Army on the back of it.

Karl Hanssens got hooked on United in its purest form, watching the BBC religiously with his Anglophile family in Belgium.

©Karl Hanssens/ Terrace Edition. Manchester United fans queue for tickets to the upcoming FA Cup Semi-Final. April 1985.

While his mates were out in the street playing football at quarter to six on a Saturday, Karl would be glued to the Videprinter as the English football scores jutted onto the screen.

There would be results from Baseball Ground, Derby and the County Ground Northampton, but Manchester United were the team his retinas scanned for.

Maybe it would have been different if, by quirk of fate, the Hanssens family weren’t able to pick up Ceefax as they did, or if English newspapers weren’t available in Belgium, as there were.

Maybe he’d have been an Club Brugge fan like his father, instead of waiting to get his hands on the Daily Mirror to read the match reports that he longed to attend himself.

But, life works in mysterious ways and thanks to Karl’s dedication to taking in English football and everything that came with it, we are left, in 2024, with a wonderfully gritty archive of photos of Manchester United Football Club and its home at Old Trafford.

©Karl Hanssens/ Terrace Edition. Old Trafford. April 1985. Munich clock and piles of timber.

While Terrace Edition photographers focus on what is know as “football fan culture” Karl was ahead of his time in turning the camera on the crowd and the grounds in nothing more than youthful fascination.

The story of how he got his first taste of English football is just as remarkable.

Coinciding with one of the Hanssens family’s regular holidays in England, Karl sent an envelope to Liverpool FC, containing the money for four tickets for the match against Manchester United in March 1985.

Weeks passed, with no response from Anfield, so Karl resigned himself to the historical wonders of a trip to Chester for his upcoming ’85 holiday to Blighty via the car ferry from Ostend.

Yet, on the off-chance, his father suggested checking the local post office and to their surprise, an envelope was waiting, stuffed full with four tickets to Liverpool-United. The Anfield club even posted the change.

©Karl Hanssens/ Terrace Edition. Manchester United vs Stoke City. April 1985.

The Hanssens family stood on the Kop that day, but Karl’s eyes were on the away end and the Red Army’s surges. He never said a word when Frank Stapleton scored a header in the 73rd minute to send the visiting United fans into raptures.

Karl was biding his time.

After a bout of nagging that only a teenage football fanatic can put together, the Hanssens family made a detour the following week to Old Trafford, to watch United take on Stoke City.

The tread on Karl’s trainers was tested as he walked laps of the ground, in some sort of pilgrimage, in wonder at this post-industrial castle on wasteland that could have been Gracelands.

Karl’s dad parked his white Peugeot outside the “Red Devils Souvenir Shop” which was no more than a Portakabin with rudimentary merchandise that was still prized by the young enthusiast.

©Karl Hanssens/ Terrace Edition. Red Devils Souvenir Shop. April 1985. His dad’s white Peugeot in view.

The Munich clock sat above the souvenir shop, on what looked like a turreted train yard with piles of timber for ongoing improvements that are a million miles away from current plans for redevelopment.

The contrast to today’s Megastore and vast e-commerce empire is stark, and over the course of this series, Terrace Edition will put together Karl’s archive of photographs to let supporters make up their own minds about Old Trafford, its future and where it’s been.

Fans queued before the Stoke match for upcoming 1984/85 FA Cup Semi-Final vs Liverpool, long before the days of global online ticket websites.

Football wasn’t a glamorous sport back then, the Heysel stadium disaster was about to happen just a few months later in Karl’s homeland.

Manchester United beat Stoke City 5-0 on April 6. 1985.

©Karl Hanssens/ Terrace Edition. Stretford End. Manchester United vs Stoke City. April 1985.

The ticket cost £4.50, reassuringly cheap, some might say to Karl, who now resides in Stella Artois city Levuven, when compared to today’s prices.

United legend Sammy McIlroy was in the Stoke City eleven that day and the home faithful gave the Northern Irishman a rousing reception.

Karl bought a Brian Robson book, from that souvenir shop. He still has it and leafs through it as he does his photos of football’s simple pleasures.

A United Home is an ongoing collaboration between Karl Hanssens and Terrace Edition.

Share you memories on thoughts on the matches involved via our website: www.TerraceEdition.com, our profiles on X and Instagram: @TerraceEdition or by emailing terraceedition@gmail.com

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