Source: Telegraph
Manchester United v Barcelona: Sir Alex Ferguson pays price for caution
The reality of a one-sided contest forces an uncomfortable revision on the standing of Manchester United in the football power list. On this showing they are not in Barcelona's league. None are.
Sir Alex Ferguson wore the look of a boxer who had walked on to a right hook in the first round and never recovered. In effect, his team had.
As it happened in RomeThis was not his best night and he might think better of taking to task a reporter who had the gall to ask him a question he didn't like.
The inquiry sought to determine how a figure renowned for his resilience might come back from a reverse like this. Ferguson hit the hairdryer button. "How long have you known me? Bloody silly question," he snapped.
The rebuke answered the question in its own way. He cares all right. His mood will get worse before it gets better. He'll wake in the night seeing a myriad of Messis running rings around his team.
This was a reality check of the visceral kind. To his credit he paid due respect to the victors and offered no excuses. The better team won, he said. They did more than that. Barcelona had the English champions running around like Stoke.
United had no answer to the keep-ball artistry that shifts the footballing epicentre a thousand miles to the south of Manchester.
Where was the coruscating precision of the Mancunian aristocracy so evident on English fields? Buried deep in the triangles of Catalonia is where.
Barcelona's geometric wizardry was a ligature that squeezed the life out of United's challenge despite an enterprising opening in which Ji-Sung Park might have capitalised when Victor Valdes spilt a rocket from Ronaldo.
Perhaps the mistake was to play in white. The last time Barcelona ran into a strip this colour they cut it to ribbons at the Bernabeu.
Conflict resolution is the story of Rome. This execution was as brutal as any delivered in the Colosseum.
This was a contest to determine not only the champions of Europe but to establish rights to football's eternal flame, to claim absolutely the game's aesthetic high ground. It is a pity that a team built around attacking principles no less robust than Barcelona's was betrayed by a cautious selection.
You might argue that the Manchester United we see on Saturday afternoons did not turn up until Carlos Tevez appeared for the second half. Shame because Ferguson's circumspection cost the match the firework display we all wanted. Cristiano Ronaldo cannot win European Cups on his own, as hard as he tried on Wednesday night. It takes two teams to tango. One team dared to win, the other was too scared to lose.
All day in the precincts of these seven hills, tribal disputes manifest in song and good humoured banter sought to establish cultural dominance. Long histories rich in tradition underpinned the rival campaigns.
United and Barcelona entered the arena as the big dogs in the football food chain. Barcelona left with the bone.
The tendency to tinker, to overcomplicate selections and strategies in an attempt to establish his coaching credentials in this milieu is a habit that has betrayed Ferguson in the past.
In Rome, he opted to contain instead of attack. The plan unravelled with the early goal, he said. Samuel Eto'o's strike against the run of play didn't help. A team with justifiable claims to be the best ought not to be derailed so conclusively.
A year ago in the semi-final Ferguson used the same defensive tactics and got away with it thanks to a brilliant strike by Paul Scholes. Barcelona have taken the story on. If only Ferguson had sent out his team as he did in Milan and at the Emirates, to attack in the Manchester United manner.
The day before Carlo Ancelotti spoke of the deficit between Serie A and the Premier League and the need for Italy to catch the English train. Barcelona have and their marvellous variations claimed the right to be regarded as the proper custodians of the beautiful game.
The noise might have drifted up from that ancient sporting bear pit the Circus Maximus, such was the decibel count when Barcelona stroked the match into life. For the next few minutes that was all they saw of the ball. United had it on the end of a string. Then out of nothing Eto'o detonated the match with a delicious two step through the United defence to shred the English script.
Ferguson loves to weave the myth about United doing it the hard way. It doesn't get much harder than gifting a goal start to team that has hit La Liga for a cumulative ton this season.
The goal gave Barcelona the authority to play the game at their pace.
United, suitably unhinged, sought to hurry the ball forward not through feet, as they would on Saturday afternoons, but over the top. It was for the remainder of the half a regression to the Seventies, serving only to polish the Barca halo still further.
United improved after the break without threatening Barcelona's dominance. Messi's headed goal was merited on personal and collective grounds.
Barcelona deserved to take the European Cup for a third time because they stuck to their principles. United compromised theirs and paid the price with a first defeat in a European final.
History of sorts, I suppose, but not the record sought.
