Old photos of Manchester United’s history fill the walls of the Old Nag’s Head public house in the city centre and many feature the club’s illustrious European history. There’s George Best with the European Cup in 1968, manager Sir Matt Busby and Best with the big cup too. There’s a bleak snowy field in Munich after the 1958 air disaster, a huge 1968 colour picture of a toothless Nobby Stiles parading the European Cup with his sidekick Paddy Crerand equally jubilant. Best again, wearing a sombrero in Lisbon in 1966 after one of his and the team’s greatest performances, and more modern photos.The pub will be filled on Thursday night as it is before every United home game. Sabah FK will become the first Azerbaijani team to play United as the Champions League is welcomed back for the first time in three years.United and the fans need the fix.The club need the prestige, the revenues (they were geared up financially to reach the last eight of the Champions League season after season, yet have reached that stage only once in the past 12 years), the games, the opportunities for more players, for fans to secure tickets who wouldn’t otherwise get access to them. The final few thousand tickets are still on general sale for the Sabah game, in part because the visitors are expected to bring only a handful of supporters.Manchester United’s European pedigree is clearly visible inside the Old Nag’s Head in the city centre (The Athletic)On the financial side, the benefits of being back in Europe’s premier club competition are stark. Like several English peers, the club’s finances don’t really work without the assorted gate, commercial and prize money that flow from the Champions League. Indeed, United, with big debt to service and little in the way of owner funding flowing their way, need it more than most.How much they’ll reap will depend on how well they do in this year’s competition — £1.8million ($2.4m) per league-phase win is on offer, and plenty more than that if they progress to the knockout stages — but the size of the Champions League prize pot is so vast that, even if United were to lose all eight league-phase games, they’d still top their earnings from reaching the Europa League final two seasons ago.The Athletic estimates the club’s minimum take from the Champions League this season at £45m and could reach as high as £129m if they were to win the competition.That’s a long shot, but the lucre is notable and much welcomed after two years away. That much is reflected in United’s kit manufacturing deal with Adidas. Last year’s European exile saw £10m hived off earnings from that agreement, but being back in the Champions League ensures the club’s revenue from the contract will return to around £90m in 2026-27.From pubs to hotels to taxi drivers and hot-dog sellers, Manchester’s hospitality sector will benefit after the drought of games last year, too. United played only 20 home matches in 2025-26; it will likely be closer to 30 this time.Away from home, hardcore fans are excited about the return of European away games and trips to Como, Lisbon, Madrid and Villarreal, continuing the recent quirk of so many games in Iberia. It’s a chance to see the world and so much more than 90 minutes of football. At least UEFA has acted and helped introduce ticket-price caps for travelling fans after years of Spanish clubs charging English visitors eye-watering amounts.Do many of those supporters scrambling around for flights to Milan (for Como) or working out the nearest airport to Villarreal (Valencia) really think United will be going back to Madrid in May to contend the 2027 Champions League final? Not really. This isn’t a vintage United side, but head coach Michael Carrick, himself a Champions League winner in 2008, notes the importance of top-flight European football to the club.“It means an awful lot,” Carrick said in his pre-Sabah press conference. “It’s challenging yourself against the elite, the very best. Over a long period of time, this club has been used to it, challenging the best and being the best. It’s not something you can take for granted as to what it takes to be there and stay there.“We’ve missed out on it for a number of years and now we’re back. It’s where we want to be every single year and it’s where we should expect to be. It’s what we have to push for and it’s the standards we have to set. It’s up to us to be able to do that but I think we’ve made huge steps over the last few months to finish the league really strong and be in this position. Now it’s about what’s next… but it’s a magical competition. When you’re out of it, you want to be in it."United have been champions of Europe three times: in 1968, 1999 and 2008. Maybe that’s below par for a club of their size, though it compares favourably with north London’s absence of European Cups, if not Liverpool’s six.Either way, European football’s top competition is a major deal in United’s history. There’s a tunnel at Old Trafford named after Munich, the German city that was the scene of the 1958 air crash. United were trailblazers at that time, going into European competition against the wishes of the English Football League, which felt doing so would damage the integrity of English football. Busby insisted.“Some people called me a visionary, others a reactionary, while a few called me awkward or stubborn,” he later said. “Prestige alone demanded that the continental challenge should be met, not avoided.”United started well in Europe. Their first home game remains a record scoreline, 10-0 versus Anderlecht in 1956, yet it was played at Manchester City’s Maine Road since Old Trafford didn’t have floodlights. In 2007, on the 50th anniversary of that game, a Belgian friend helped me track down Anderlecht’s Hippolyte Van den Bosch.“We were the best team in Belgium, a really great side,” said the man who played for Anderlecht for 15 years. “But Manchester United were on another level. This was the best English team I’ve ever seen."When Athletic Club beat United 5-3 in the snowy Basque country in 1957, it was United’s first defeat in Europe. In 2003, I spoke to defender Bill Foulkes about that trip.“After experiencing the terrible winter, I consoled myself that at least it would be warm and sunny when we reached Bilbao,” he said. “But all too soon I discovered that my childlike impression of Spain, based wholly on holiday posters at railway stations, was chronically misleading. To start with, the cloud was so thick that our pilot took ages to find the airport — he had us glueing our noses to the windows in search of a runway — and when we did touch down we disembarked to find slush and filth everywhere. There followed an uncomfortable, lurching ride in a rickety old coach. Next came difficulties with food at the hotel, where we were served ham and eggs in some sort of jelly.”United lost to the Spanish champions.“On returning to the airport we found that our plane had been left out in a snowstorm and was now coated in slushy snow, while there was thick ice on the runway,” said Foulkes. “Of course, we couldn’t know at the time but this scene represented a chilling glimpse of what awaited at Munich just over a year later. We were dismayed at the prospect of a delay, especially as several of the lads had picked up stomach ailments at the hotel, and there would have been a hell of a row with the English authorities if we got back to England too late to fulfil our league fixtures on Saturday. So we asked the crew what we could do to help and they told us we could sweep the snow and slush from the aircraft. A few of us seized brushes and set to work, while Billy Whelan’s camera recorded the bizarre scene for posterity. We all had a laugh about it at the time, but considering the subsequent tragedy, the incident takes on a positively macabre aspect.“Even with the wings and fuselage swept, we were anything but home and dry. After getting off the ground in Bilbao we were tossed all over the shop by a ferocious storm, then were subjected to a terrifyingly bumpy landing on the clifftop at Jersey, where we touched down to refuel. Mark Jones, David Pegg, Geoff Bent and one or two others were turning green.”United overturned the result, winning 3-0 in the second leg and reached the semi-final that year before losing to Real Madrid. The reported crowd of 135,000 remains the biggest in United’s history.European football mattered.Then Munich happened as the team returned from Belgrade following a 1958 quarter-final success that took them to the semi-final. A decimated side would not get to that point again for eight years. In 1968, 10 years after Munich, Manchester United became the first English team to be crowned European champions. Benfica were beaten 4-1 after extra time at Wembley.United wore an unfamiliar all-blue strip (Benfica played in their usual red and white).“Bobby gets the ball on the centre spot, passes it to Georgie on the wing,” sing fans to the tune of the Beatles classic to this day. “Georgie beats his man and puts in a cross for Denis Law, and it’s a goal, and he’s the king. Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da, Man United, European champions.”United fans also sing “From the banks of the River Irwell, to the shores of Sicily” and “Who put the ball in the Germans’ net? Who put the ball in the Germans’ net? Who put the ball in the Germans’ net? Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.”In other words, European football matters massively to Manchester United. The two other European Cup/Champions League triumphs in 1999 and 2008 are also high points in the club’s history, Solskjaer’s winner in 1999 the most dramatic of any final.United’s absence is noticed and regretted.A year ago, I visited Bergamo to see Atalanta v Club Brugge in the Champions League. There, a UEFA official confided that its competitions and the football industry missed United’s presence. As it would. They were routinely the best-supported club, a huge pull both in person and on television. United stood for glamour and attacking football, for a global appeal earned following a rich European history of triumph and tragedy. And the Azerbaijanis will now become part of that — though they probably won’t make it to the wall of photos in the Old Nag’s Head.