They sing we’ve no history, but we’re making it!
MK DONS CHIEF ON A METEORIC RISE
PETE WINKELMAN walked the length of the pitch and handed the Queen a red balloon. ‘ What do I do with this?’ she asked him. ‘Let it go Your Majesty,’ he replied, and the head of state did as told.
‘I think she quite liked letting it go,’ smiled Winkelman, recalling the surreal mood of the opening ceremony at stadium mk, the stylish centrepiece of a young club set to host Chelsea in the FA Cup fourth round on Sunday.
‘The red balloon was from the early adverts for Milton Keynes and it’s the red dot in our logo. It’s one of the great adverts, about a new city where dreams are made. I remember seeing it when I was in London in the music business, and when you become Milton Keynesified that red balloon really does mean something. Enough for me to put it in the logo.’
Winkelman moved to Milton Keynes in 1993 and professional football moved in 10 years later, at about the same time Roman Abramovich was settling into Stamford Bridge. The clubs have been loosely entwined in search of their dreams.
Chelsea were opponents for the first game at the new stadium, a project driven by Winkelman and built on a site where the Sanctuary Music Arena, home to some of the UK’s first legal raves, had once stood.
MK Dons launched the coaching careers of Roberto di Matteo, who won the Champions League for Abramovich, and Eddie Newton, who will be on the bench with Guus Hiddink on Sunday. They have been loaned some of Chelsea’s young players, including Patrick Bamford, who scored 21 goals in two spells. ‘ They’re a fantastic club,’ said Winkelman. ‘I have incredible respect for Chelsea and Roman Abramovich, and his ambition. I’ve found football gets harder, not easier. Boy, do you age in football. It takes so much out of you.
‘Music is about exhilaration, about the moment. But it’s all on the up. There’s one crowd and you’re together. Football isn’t like that. Football has stress, the atmosphere can change with the importance of it all, and it is draining over the years.
‘ Roman Abramovich is having a hard year and he’s there at the games, he wants his team to win, he’s still trying to sort it out and I bet he goes to bed at night worrying about it even though he doesn’t have to worry about anything. That’s why you have to respect people who try to make a difference.’
More than a decade on, Winkelman understands why the relocation of Wimbledon to Milton Keynes provoked such anger.
‘I didn’t know anything about football when I did what I did,’ said the 58-year-old former music producer. ‘Now I’m the chairman of a football club. Move a football club? Are you mad? From the outside it didn’t seem remotely weird. No-one will be happier than me if AFC Wimbledon get back to Plough Lane. Good on them.
‘When you’re in football it is allconsuming. It has become my life. I’m not excited about Chelsea, I’m gutted about losing at Bolton. That was an important game, and Bolton were really good and that scares the life out of me, because we’ve got to the Championship and we want to stay in it and build from this level.’
Milton Keynes is 50 next year, and learning to embrace its football club, helped by promotion last year, and a night last season when Karl Robinson’s team beat Manchester United 4-0 in the Capital One Cup in front of nearly 27,000.
‘That night I knew I wasn’t mad,’ said Winkelman. ‘For years there were no seats in the upper tier, then we got seats but it was empty and suddenly it was full for the first time. I walked out and woah!
‘They sing we’ve got no history but we’re making it. You need those Manchester United moments. That’s when you make your allegiance. Your family takes you and it’s the thing everyone’s talking about. Once you’ve experienced that and made a connection, you live with the horrors.
‘I prayed for a goal because I wanted to know what a full stadium sounded like when we scored. I couldn’t have believed what would actually happen. That set the base to get us promoted. Having players like Dele Alli and Benik Afobe probably helped as well.’
Afobe was on loan from Arsenal and Bournemouth have since paid £10million for him. Alli has lit up the Barclays Premier League since moving to Tottenham for £5m.
Winkleman believes the teenager will mature into a ‘generationally important’ England player and his progress reflects well on youth development at MK Dons, which is also responsible for Everton’s Brendan Galloway and Liverpool’s Sheyi Ojo.
The academy is central to the philosophy. Robinson works with the Championship’s smallest budget, blooding youngsters, nurtured from within and loaned from elsewhere. ‘We’re halfway through the journey,’ said Winkelman, for whom the next key phase is a training ground.
He tried to acquire the National Bowl, with plans to revive the iconic music venue and add training facilities, but has ended up buying land near Cosgrove, in Northamptonshire.
‘Our great years aren’t going to be now. They’re not even going to be under me. We’re further away than I thought last summer. Can I expect my team to stay in the Championship when they have to train on a 4G pitch at a school when the weather is bad?
‘What I must do as the first chairman is put the infrastructure in place that allows this club to become a Premier League club.
‘It’s a big task to catch teams that have been around for 100 years. I’m trying to do it in one generation, to grow into that 30,000 stadium and stop fans singing, “Your ground’s too big for you”. On Sunday it won’t be.’