The new stadium cost £6.3 million, with money coming from community shares, a government-run investment fund, crowd-funding and members digging deep into their pockets

It’s 90 minutes before kick off and the stadium’s concourse is filling up with excited United fans clutching their match tickets and wearing red-and-white scarves and jerseys.

Inside the ground, a full repertoire of Manchester United songs is belted out in the bar and the main stand.

A huge European game is weeks away and this sunny afternoon in Manchester is a significant milestone for the club.

This isn’t Old Trafford, though. Fifteen miles to the east of Manchester United’s “Theatre of Dreams”, a club with a special link to England’s biggest football team is hosting its first match in its new 5,000 capacity stadium. After a decade on the road, FC United of Manchester finally has somewhere to call home.

FC United is a breakaway team set up in 2005 by a group of disaffected United supporters in protest at the £790 million takeover of their club by the Glazer family. A debt-free club was suddenly saddled with loans to finance the buyout and, at its peak, debt under the American family reached £716.5 million.

Some fans reacted to the acrimonious takeover by burning effigies of Malcolm Glazer, the head of the family, in the streets outside the 76,000 capacity Old Trafford. Others, angry as much about the direction modern-day football was taking than about what was happening to their beloved club, had a more radical idea.

“A number of us decided we wouldn’t pay one more penny to United,” said Alan Hargrave, a founding member of FC United who has supported Manchester United for 30 years.

“We made that stand but we didn’t know what we were going to be doing with our Saturdays. Then, after some drinks, one of the guys said, ‘let’s form our own football club’. But there isn’t a book that says how to do it.”

The group of fans, about 1,000 strong, threw together a team that began playing weeks later in the local league, in the 10th tier of the English game.

“We turned up for our first friendly, not knowing how many would come to watch,” recalled Karl Marginson, who has coached FC United from the very start. “There ended up being 2,500 people there.”

The team has just been promoted to the sixth tier. Two more promotions and it will be playing in England’s professional leagues. And it now has its own stadium, after 10 years of renting from others.

The club is a co-operative run by its members — the fans. It costs £12 pounds a year to be a member, and for that you get to vote on everything from the look of the jerseys and the badge, to ticket prices and the name of the club.

There are more than 3,000 members, some in outposts as far-flung as Australia, New Zealand, Russia and China.

“One member, one vote,” said Nick Wolfenden, the club’s strength and conditioning coach. “That’s the whole point, you get to have a say. The choice isn’t taken out of your hands by a fat cat who is creaming a load of money out of the club.”

The new stadium cost £6.3 million to build, with money coming from community shares, a government-run social investment fund, crowd-funding and members digging deep into their pockets. Broadhurst Park is a compact ground, with banners and flags lining the field that are adorned with words such as “2 Uniteds, 1 Soul,” “Traffordable,” and “Football without fans is nothing”.