da poker： As Manchester United’s Europa League final against Ajax falls a day before the 12th anniversary of bitter rivals Liverpool’s famous comeback victory over AC Milan in Istanbul, the Red Devils will be looking for a similar spirit of triumph this evening in Stockholm. Few would begrudge them such elation.
da dobrowin： It’s hard to talk about this European final as anything other than an insignificant diversion in the wake of Monday night’s evil: but what would life be like without insignificant diversions?
But that makes it hard to remember that this game is, as much as any football match can be, incredibly important: just a few days ago, it was the only thing that mattered to United’s season. And come August, we’ll realise that whatever happens tonight, it all came down to this game.
That’s their own fault, of course. The last few weeks have seen Jose Mourinho field teams in the Premier League which have felt almost tantamount to throwing the game – for no other reason than he simply no longer cared about that competition. In some ways, it was the right call: why bother with finishing fourth when you can win a trophy? And yet it is now universally accepted that the Champions League, with its prestige and prize money, are of crucial importance in the modern game.
Not just for the club’s finances, but for their summer recruitment, too.
There are similarities with Liverpool in 2005 here, too. Liverpool ended the season in fifth place in the Premier League, level on points with Bolton Wanderers and in a UEFA Cup spot. But they did make it all the way to the Champions League final, putting pressure onto UEFA: if Liverpool won, would they still have to compete in the next season’s UEFA Cup?
In the end, they did win, and they did get a Champions League place. But there are two lessons for Manchester United from that story. For one thing, Liverpool’s mentality wasn’t to win because they wanted a spot in the next season’s Champions League, they wanted it because it was a European trophy (admittedly a much more desirable one than United will be playing for tonight). Whatever happened to winning competitions for the sake of victory and glory? And if Jose Mourinho didn’t feel the same way, why would he have sacked off the Premier League?
The second reason is what happened next.
After Liverpool win the cup and were admitted to the third qualifying round of the Champions League the next season, both they and United themselves made it through to the next round against eastern European opposition. But the team who finished fourth in the Premier League in 2005, Everton, didn’t. They lost in hugely controversial circumstances against Villarreal in what remains the Toffees’ only Champions League tie to date.
That might just show that United’s tactic of discounting the Premier League in favour of attempting to win the Europa League was a sound one. Liverpool, who finished fourth this season, will have to compete in a qualifying round. No English team has lost in the Champions League qualifying stage since Everton in 2005, and as a result, England has always had four teams in the group stage ever since. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t the possibility for another upset: Arsenal, over the years, have been given tough draws like Besiktas and Udinese in play-off rounds.
In the end, though, whatever the similarities with this Europa League final has with Liverpool’s 2005 Champions League triumph, this game will be unlike any other. And yet it is still a huge game in the context of United’s season. Whatever happens, football will stay secondary, but there is no doubt that there are still a lot of professional goals at stake.
Winning this game would no longer lead to a feeling of an inevitable triumph of a bigger team over a weaker one. But perhaps the leveling of the playing field means football will give a grieving city a game to get lost in, even if only for a few hours.
[ad_pod id=’playwire’ align=’center’]