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ManUtd 1-1 Chelsea: A Damn Close Run Thing

May 31, 2008

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Manchester United European Champions!Paul James

I was afraid this would be an unhappy night for United, one way or another. Our recent record against Chelsea has featured cautious team selection and under-performance. A 100% record in European finals can’t last forever. There was the curse of the Charity Shield, the possibility of a referee persuaded to favour the Russian billions, the worry that skilful passing would die a death on a disgrace of a pitch.

Even if we won there was bound to be trouble, especially with the Moscow police. I was at work and the Management Centre was bound again to prove incapable of providing adequate TV coverage. Yet I had not been tense; shades of 1996 when I was so euphoric about winning the league that I felt that a final was just icing on the cake.

I was sure that I could relax and enjoy the enormous privilege of seeing the club I have watched for forty three years in their third European Cup Final. Came the day, Ferguson had picked the full attack. Our flair and speed against their power. The promise of a big screen materialised.

There was, me and a United supporting IBM trainer called Jolene in a South Coast soccer desert with our first bottles of wine while others purporting to be interested in the match finished dinner and wandered in later. The whistle blew, the match of the century (so far) was under way. Now, whatever was going on inside me was certainly not relaxation!

I was sipping wine on a balmy summer evening. In Moscow it had been throwing it down all day and the imported turf laid hastily across the underlying plastic pitch looked sodden.

United took the initiative. Scholes and Carrick controlled the middle of the field. The first threats came from Hargreaves, who got in several crosses from the right, but it was Ronaldo who emerged on the other flank, and Rooney as the inspirations behind a magnificent first half in which United showed all those boring continentals how a European Cup final should be played in all aspects except the most important; finishing.

 Chelsea could not hold Ronaldo when he attacked. The first time he beat his man he just failed to make contact with Evra but he grew in confidence and was a constant threat, even later on when we were under pressure. It all seemed European and rather academic though, until Scholes pretty cynically took out Makalele, ending up with a bloodied face and a yellow card. Makalele also got booked. I couldn’t see why, either, but the Chelsea players acted like uncontrolled infants, an attitude that later cost them.

Scholes went off with tissues pressed against the cuts on his face and his bleeding nose. You knew we were going to try to fix him; it was not just that he was getting the space to orchestrate trouble for Chelsea, it was the history of his missing out in 1999. His influence was such that while we were down to ten men Chelsea looked dangerous for the first time.

When he came back on he was immediately involved. Hargreaves won a throw-in near the right hand corner flag, three slick passes between Scholes and Wes Brown released Brown. Rooney and Tevez made their runs, Wes Brown launched the perfect far post ball to where Ronaldo rose high like the clichéd salmon and placed the perfect header inside the post as Essien and Cech stood rooted; 25 minutes 1-0.

United were now oozing confidence and stroking the ball about, yet Chelsea all but equalised; Lampard’s ball in was headed back into the middle by Drogba to Ballack in the six yard box. Van der Sar, picking this of all matches to have an indecisive one, stood on the line and Rio Ferdinand just had to get to it. Van der Sar did brilliantly to parry his own centre half’s point blank header from just under the bar.

From that close shave Rooney got the ball by his own right corner flag and shimmied his way like magic through two opponents. He ran with it alone up the right wing and when it looked as if Cole had shunted him into a cul-de-sac he picked out Ronaldo, forty yards away flying down the left wing.

Ronaldo crossed perfectly, Tevez met the ball with a diving header and Cech somehow parried it. Brilliant, speedy, end-to-end, United at our breathtaking best. Terry’s clearance fell outside the area where Carrick, eighteen yards out, met it. If he had controlled it and stuck it wide the European Cup would have been ours before half time. He hammered it and Cech got a hand to it.

Minutes later another piece of Rooney magic delivered an amazing low long cross from the right when this seemed impossible. How did Tevez miss that in front of an open goal? We were murdering them, possession 65/35, class movement, regular chances.

Chelsea came back into it as the interval approached because Essien, tired of being beaten by Ronaldo, decided to come forward. His hopeful through ball deflected off Vidic and hit the back of Ferdinand’s heels. Van der Sar’s feet skidded from under him (wrong boots for the pitch? He wasn’t the only one) and Frank Lampard lifted the ball expertly over him. Instead of being three up it was 45 minutes 1-1.

If we had the first half, Chelsea had most of the second. It began well enough for us but with Ballack and Lampard now putting Scholes and Carrick under pressure and Essien attacking Ronaldo, they had more of the ball and started clocking up the statistics.

Most of their efforts were long shots and the resulting corners. Our defending was not desperate but we were pushed too deep and there was a ten minute period just after the hour when we could not even get into their half. It would certainly not have been against the run of play if they had scored again and for the only time in the game (according to John Downey, my correspondent on the spot) the Chelsea fans were outsinging ours.

Back in Hampshire, regular swigs of the soothing juice could not prevent me clinging white-knuckled to my chair a few times. Near the hour Vidic made a great clearance with Drogba breathing down his neck. Then Carrick produced a smart overhead clearance from a penetrating free kick.

With less than fifteen minutes left Malouda looked to be through and when he went over Ferdinand’s leg my heart missed a beat, but he was the only one who appealed. The climax to their assault came a couple of minutes later when Drogba curled an absolute beauty onto the outside of the post after an exchange with Makalele.

We worked our way back into the game but the skill of Evra and Ronaldo on the left flank was not matched in the area and in the final minute Ferdinand committed a head high foul on Joe Cole; another heart stopping moment. Any argument about whether it was in the area or not became academic when the linesman stopped waving his flag; they didn’t even get a free kick.

As normal time drew to a close, Ryan Giggs came on for his record 759th United appearance, replacing a booked, bloodied and tired Scholes.

Extra time, and the game became even. Tevez was a whisker away from getting through, then Ashley Cole dribbled cleverly into our area and found Ballack, who in turn found Lampard on the penalty spot. He turned and shot, almost casually, against the underside of our bar. As the now full hotel bar revealed its true anti-United feelings that 1999 commentary line came back to me; name on the trophy.

When we drove forward again with Evra’s brilliant run on the left, Ryan Giggs connected with the perfect cut back from about 12 yards and I was certain he had made history. But Terry somehow managed to get a head to it and deflect it wide.

Nani came on for Rooney and most of the action in the second period of extra time was us attacking up the left and just failing to connect, or Tevez driving up the middle and Terry and company just snuffing it out. The pitch was taking its toll and folk were going down all over it with cramp.

As extra time came to its end the tension told and a fracas started when Tevez gave the ball back to Chelsea by kicking it off for a throw-in (something they had done twice already). Their players went ape and it ended with Drogba, part time lunatic, giving Vidic a slap in the face.

He must have calculated that the referee was otherwise engaged but the linesman had sneaked on the pitch to help and the incident occurred a couple of feet in front of the official, a certain and utterly pointless red card. His captain, Terry, did not look amused but was busy preventing Vidic from retaliating, an act Ferdinand had to take up as the huge African, instead of walking off, walked menacingly towards Vidic who, being Serbian, must have been entirely innocent.

As penalties became inevitable both sides prepared; Anderson came on for Brown, Belletti for Makalele, and the greatest club prize of all was down to a shoot-out.

The Moscow rain was belting down. Tevez did his best to make up for his misses with a hard low shot as Cech dived the other way; 1-0. Van der Sar guessed correctly for Ballack’s shot but was nowhere near it; 1-1. I was worried Carrick would miss, but he took it well as Cech again went the wrong way; 2-1. Belletti made it 2-2.

The one man I was utterly sure of was Ronaldo but he walked up less cocky than usual. He stepped up, did his hesitation bit, and shot left, nowhere near as hard or as near the post as he should; Cech went the right way and it hit his shoulder and stayed out. For the first time I felt as if the European Cup had been lost. By the man who had done such a lot to win it. As Jolene and I sat in silence most of the allegedly neutral room erupted in delight.

Lampard came up and hit his low to the right, Van der Sar got a hand to it but it was in; 2-3. Hargreaves made no mistake, just under the bar; 3-3. Surely the despicable Ashley Cole would miss. He shot right and Van der Sar got a decent hand to it; I thought he’d saved it but it just went in behind the post; 3-4. Nani stepped up, my heart sank. He had to score to keep us in the Cup and I could imagine his curling elegantly over the bar. None of it, he thumped it home left and though Cech got to it, it was travelling very fast; 4-4.

It was left to cor blimey good bloke John Terry to win the European Cup for Chelsea. As all the world now knows, he missed. Tried a trick too many and his standing foot went from under him. Shot wide with Van der Sar airborne in the wrong direction. The room was in shock. I suppressed the urge to stand up and give them the appropriate hand gestures but my heart started beating again.

Anderson stepped up for his only kick of the match and cracked his home with power as Cech, who would have done better standing still, dived left; 5-4. Substitute Kalou scored his with no trouble, 5-5. Ryan Giggs put his away expertly in the bottom corner; 6-5.

Then Anelka, the itinerant mercenary who has played arrogantly for everyone we hate except Leeds and has then one by one left them in the lurch, stepped up and after a minimal run-up shot to his left. Van der Sar said afterwards he knew where it was going. Graeme Sounness in the commentary box said Van der Sar started smiling in mid air, even before he reached out with both hands and saved the shot and won the huge, elusive cup for United in the cruellest possible way.

He screamed at the fans. The United players raced to celebrate with him. Cristiano Ronaldo joined in at first and then lay down and cried. The United fans sang “We’ve won it three times”. John Terry cried. I hugged Jolene. The rest of the room hubbubbed back to business talk. Hang them and hang tomorrow, it does not get better than this, ever. Jolene and I finished the wine.

This was no way to settle a European Cup Final but were we lucky? No more than anybody else who wins on penalties. We had 12 shots to their 24 but they only had three on target, which was a good job given Van der Sar’s uncertainty. He made the one save in the game itself, against his own player and was beaten by two shots which hit the woodwork. Cech made four saves, two of them world class and was beaten by the one Terry saved.

We had 58% possession overall and made 406 passes with a 77% success ratio; they made 276 with 68% success. These are not the statistics of a team who were outplayed and fluked it on penalties, as implied by Avram Grant and Frank Lampard afterwards.

United played the season as a team, for each other. I felt sorry for John Terry who was not the man who cost his team. Drogba’s selfish stupidity ruled him out of the penalty competition. Anelka apparently refused to take the penalty which Terry missed. It was as if the glue holding Chelsea’s world class egos together had finally given way at the most crucial moment.

Then there was the sight of their team being led up the steps by Peter Kenyon, their turncoat commercial manager, who ended up with a medal around his neck. What was that all about? They should have made the twat take the penalty. At least it rained so hard on him his suit will be ruined forever.

If Kenyon was the lifelong United fan he once claimed to be he would know that history is not bought off the shelf. This Cup has cost decent, innocent lives in Munich and in Brussels. The gods do not hand it out easily to people just because they are rich and fancy themselves; they have to pay their dues like everybody else.

I am left with a long, warm feeling of sporting contentment and a message from Moscow on my telephone. It’s from Niall and it goes “Obla Di Obla Da Man United, European Champions”. It tells me we are 3-5 and counting. It also tells me Niall badly needs singing lessons.

Copyright © Paul James

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