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Jonathan White

Another day and another opportunity for the rest of the football world to laugh at the expense of Manchester United.
This time it is because of an embarrassing incident at the club’s newly launched preview of their upcoming experience centres, which opened its doors to the public in downtown Beijing on June 8.
The venue is to give people a taste of the three fan experience centres that are set to open in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenyang next year.
The club crest was reproduced on the front of the building on the city’s Dashilan shopping street with one glaring error: the ship above the Red Devil was facing the wrong way.

The two normally face in opposite directions, with the devil looking to the right and the ship heading towards the left. Instead, both face to the right.
The mistake was pointed out on Reddit, where fans were quick to make light of the error.

“I find it very accurate given the direction we have been moving lately,” quipped one Reddit user while another claimed that “it means we’re shipping someone to China. Sanchez probably.”
Another user claimed that the mistake was deliberate: “Facing right brings good luck in China, I am sure our PR team has done its research.”
The most cutting remark was that it was “fitting given how the club’s been going backwards past few years.” On Chinese social media, one Sina Weibo user said it was “too funny” while several users pointed out the error on the club’s official Weibo account’s post on the launch of the centre.

Many Reddit users got bogged down in the reason for the ship being on the badge, claiming the wrongly held belief that it is because of the Manchester Ship Canal that links the city with the Irish Sea at Liverpool.
The Manchester United badge has featured a ship since 1902 when the club adopted the name – changing from Newton Heath LYR – and began using the coat of arms of the city.
That coat of arms was granted to the city in 1842 and featured a ship because of the global enterprise that emanated from the city during the cotton trade. This predated the Ship Canal by more than 50 years.

Here's how the #ILOVEUNITED crowd in Beijing celebrated @WayneRooney's opener... pic.twitter.com/QNqgU31Ywf
— Manchester United (@ManUtd) 30 April 2017

It has been on all five versions of the club crest since they stopped using the city’s coat of arms in 1960.
Both City and United had the ship in full sail on their club crests for many years, with the Manchester Evening News reporting that the ship of the coat of arms faces America, because it was a key partner during the years of the cotton trade.
If that is the case then someone in Beijing may have decided to swap the ship to make sure it faced America, which would be right rather than left as the journey is quicker heading east over the Pacific. One report on China’s Sina Sports website claims that the badge has already been fixed.
Asia pre-season tours: Barcelona, Manchester clubs and Juventus lead visits to China, Japan and Singapore
The club, which claims to have 107 million followers in China, are heading east this summer.
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s side will be in Shanghai to face Tottenham in the International Champions Cup on July 25 at Hongkou Stadium.
This will be their first visit since 2016 when the first overseas Manchester derby had to be cancelled because of a waterlogged pitch at the National Stadium in Beijing.
The fan experience centres, which are set to open in 2020, will “will offer a place to go and have that shared experience,” explains Manchester United’s managing director Richard Arnold.
“The technology and what that offers and how it operates in terms of providing an authentically engaging sense of what it’s like to be at Old Trafford or at the game is going to be interesting. And the chance to do things as a family, to eat or shop together, is exciting.”


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English Premier League

Manchester United’s China club crest mistake at Beijing experience centre greeted with ridicule

A photograph from the launch of the Manchester United experience centre preview in Beijing clearly shows the ship on the crest sailing the wrong way. Photo: Sina Weibo/Manchester United

Pictures from the launch of the Manchester United experience centre preview in Beijing. Photo: Sina Weibo/Manchester United

Sport

Football

Fans joke that ship facing wrong way represents the club in recent years, while others hope it means Alexis Sanchez is leaving for China
Error has already been corrected according to reports in Chinese media, with official experience centres set to follow next year


Fans joke that ship facing wrong way represents the club in recent years, while others hope it means Alexis Sanchez is leaving for China
