The football club on a unique mission with close ties to Manchester United finds itself on the brink

EXCLUSIVE: Manchester 62 FC are leading the conversation around CTE in football, but they face going out of business

Victoria Stadium, Gibraltar, the home of Manchester 62 (GETTY IMAGES)

A unique football club that for years shared the Manchester United name and had the blessing of Sir Matt Busby for its creation faces the prospect of going out of business in a matter of weeks.

Gibraltarian top-flight side Manchester 62 FC were formed back in 1962 as Manchester United FC by a group of fans from the island, with the club also sharing United’s colours after Busby gave his approval.

The name was changed to Manchester 62 in 2013 after Gibraltar was accepted into UEFA, with the potential for two teams of the same name to meet in European competition requiring action to be taken.

In recent years the club has become front and centre of the movement to address head injuries in football and to tackle the potentially devastating consequences of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a condition linked to repeated trauma of the brain, where footballers are seen as being at a higher risk due to the repeated heading of footballs throughout their careers.

The club’s mission to raise awareness of CTE and to tackle the issue of concussion and its impact in football has been driven by the club’s American owner, Michael Monsour, whose career before entering into football had been in senior living and memory care, with his involvement in a similar project at Pittsburgh City United having acted as the precursor to his Manchester 62 plan.

In January of 2023 the club, which is partnered with the Concussion Legacy Foundation, became the first top-flight European team to have all 10 of its outfield players wear protective headgear for games, and Monsour’s efforts to raise awareness of the issue are the subject of a documentary, ‘More Than a Game’.

But after the exit of an investor, the club faces what Monsour describes as its “darkest hour”, with the potential for it to disappear in as little as two weeks if funding is not secured, something that would not only bring an end to a storied Gibraltarian team, but also to Monsour’s vision of football tackling the issues of CTE and the lasting damage that players could face, such as dementia or Alzheimers in later life.