May 28, 2009
Barcelona with a brilliant performance defeated the English team 2-0.
Where did it all go wrong for Manchester United?
Everything was going right until they conceded after ten minutes. The goal itself was a perfect illustration of what went wrong on the night, as Andres Iniesta went through unchallenged and slipped the ball to Samuel Eto'o to score. There was no grit in the midfield and that was where United failed, they just didn't have the tenacity to prevent Barcelona from playing the way they wanted to play.
Beyond that, the goal completely knocked the stuffing out of United and they just never recovered. It was surprising to see this team play with so little character and look so utterly unable to bounce back from a position they have been in many times before.
Was this a case of Sir Alex Ferguson getting his tactics wrong?
We saw Chelsea refuse to let Barcelona play their game, but last night it seemed that United were almost drawn into it. The area that United really suffered was in central midfield where they were overrun by Xavi and Iniesta.
Maybe Ferguson could have played an extra man in there, more of a traditional 4-3-3 or 4-5-1 rather than what he ended up playing. Ferguson suggested afterwards that it had been Ryan Giggs's role to drop back into midfield when United didn't have the ball, but he really didn't do that.
A big factor for the type of game United wanted to play was the absence of Darren Fletcher. He is the kind of player they needed for a game like that. If Fletcher or even the injured Owen Hargreaves had been fit they might have been able to do something along the lines of what Chelsea did. But without him I thought United's two central midfielders in Michael Carrick and Anderson were very poor.
Were you surprised that United seized the initiative rather than sit back and try to hit Barcelona on the counter attack?
Yes, I was. I believed United would have started in a much more cautious manner and look to counter attack with real pace and strength whenever they got the ball. If anything it was the other way round and once they had gone 1-0 down they barely seemed able to retain possession. Their confidence had gone and they almost looked as if they had an inferiority complex next to some of the Barcelona players.
Maybe if United had scored early on and if Nemanja Vidic had managed to tackle Eto'o it would have been a very different game, and we would all have a very different assessment of United and of Ferguson's tactics. But games are changed by goals and I am afraid last night will be remembered as a night when United fell terribly short.
What now for United? How will they recover from this setback?
United have got to remember what they have achieved this season. In some ways it has been a fantastic season, but I have just had a nagging feeling over the past couple of months that they have been running on empty.
They scrapped their way through a lot of their final league games, often getting more than their performances warranted. But when it came to it last night, against a real top-class team, they fell short.
Winning last night would have papered over some cracks. It's not a case of United tearing it up and starting again by any means, but Ferguson will have to look at where they have not been as strong, where their cover hasn't been as good and put that right over the summer.
Some have accused Ferguson of sentimentality in his selection of Giggs and Scholes? Is their time up?
Ferguson said last night that this time last year he had thought Giggs and Paul Scholes would have been phased out over the course of this season. Giggs hasn't been phased out because he has played extremely well, well enough to pick up the PFA Player of the Year, so I don't think we can base any judgment on one extremely poor performance.
But Scholes, and I have been saying this for two or three years now, is the one who looks washed up. He can play brilliantly when United are at home and are going to have a lot of the ball. Then he can sit back, spray passes around and look wonderful. But when United are up against it he has really struggled. He looks like the one who you could see being phased out and not playing very much in what is expected to be his final season.
Once again Ronaldo refused to commit his future to United in the wake of the defeat. Should we expect another summer of speculation?
There have been conflicting noises coming out of the Ronaldo camp over the past couple weeks, but my information has been that he was of a mind to stay and Real Madrid were going to leave him where he was and go for people like Kaka, Franck Ribery, David Villa and Xabi Alonso.
But it is telling in a way that after the final he should say "I don't know, I don't know" when asked about his future. He needs to make his mind up, he messed United around last summer and his views on his future seem to change with the weather.
United need to know where they stand with him. My expectation has been that he will stay but you never know. Maybe a decision will be made for him if Florentino Perez wins the election at Real Madrid and decides the club will be better investing its money elsewhere.
Is there any hint that Barcelona's victory might signal the end of the Premier League's dominance in Europe?
We have to remember that Chelsea came within a minute of beating Barcelona fair and square in the semi-final and indeed should have beaten them.
In some ways Chelsea or Liverpool would have given Barcelona a more difficult game last night. That might sound easy to say in hindsight but Barcelona are a team that is brilliant if you let them play. Real Madrid let them play in La Liga and lost 6-2, United let them play last night and when you give them that freedom they can look brilliant.
However, this is the first time in seven meetings with English opposition that they have played the way they did last night, so maybe United made them look as good as they are, rather than making life difficult for them as Chelsea, Liverpool and previously United have have done.
Sir Alex Ferguson conceded that Manchester United performed poorly last night after his dream of becoming the first manager to retain the Champions League perished at the hands of an outstanding Barcelona team who made history of their own.
Goals in each half, from Samuel Eto’o and Lionel Messi, were enough to give Pep Guardiola’s side a 2-0 victory that their performance merited, making them the first Spanish club to complete a treble of league, domestic cup and European Cup.
However, while Ferguson had the good grace to acknowledge that Barcelona deserved to win, he is likely to be infuriated to learn that his tactics were criticised by Cristiano Ronaldo. “We only had ten minutes [on top] and then we never found ourselves again,” the United forward said. “We were not well, the tactics were not good and everything went wrong.”
Much will be made of Ferguson’s selection, which backfired as United were overrun in midfield, although the Scot defended his decision to deploy Ryan Giggs behind Ronaldo up front and leave Michael Carrick with just Anderson for company in central midfield. “We recognised the strengths of Barcelona with three midfield players,” Ferguson said. “We tried to get Ryan to play towards the front and drop into midfield. He is better at that because he is a natural midfielder, unlike Carlos [Tévez].
“We have done well to get to the final, but we had to win it to change the pattern on teams retaining it. With the players we have we expected to do better, but we could not recover from losing the first goal.”
Without naming names, the United manager was candid about his dissatisfaction with his team’s defending. Eto’o beat Edwin van der Sar at his near post in the tenth minute and Messi was allowed a free header to seal victory 20 minutes from time.
“There is a disappointment in the performance,” Ferguson said. “Some individuals will feel that themselves. Our best performances this season have been when we’ve defended well, but our defending tonight was shoddy. But credit where credit is due. We were well beaten. The better team won and there’s nothing we can do about it now.
“Tonight the disappointment was the use of the ball when we had possession. Normally we are better at that. Maybe we had an off-night. You hope they [Barcelona] make mistakes, but when we did get the ball we didn’t do enough with it.”
Ferguson reacted angrily to questions about his future at the end of a season in which United have become the first English club to win three successive league championships on two occasions. “I don’t understand that question,” he said. “How long have you known me? I don’t like you asking that question. It’s a stupid bloody question.”
Note from Times of England
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