On This Day: Barcelona 3-3 Manchester United, 1998

Cans in the morning, United songs and more cans on Las Ramblas, a bar, then the Nou Camp – my first Euro away, and I was easily pleased. When the bloke next to me asked if I knew how to skin up – something that also happened to me on a coach after the final, suggesting I’ve the look of a bum – it seemed that my life was incapable of improvement.

“We’re here coz we won fuck-all” was the tune before kick-off, this the first season of non-champions in the Champions League, but by full-time, it was “we’ll be back again in May” – such is the power of football taught by Matt Busby. “I almost want them to score, to see what happens,” I remember pontificating. Well, within minutes, they had, and unsurprisingly, it prompted a lot of noise and arm-waving, just by more people than usual – it wasn’t all that, really. The ensuing game, on the other hand, most certainly was – probably the best I’ve ever seen, if seeing is what you do from those shitty seats closer to melekh elyoin’s gita than to the pitch.

The earlier Old Trafford game – the first in the group – was also quite something, but that involved two fairly one-sided halves. United tore into Barca in the first, Barca patiently unstitched United in the second, and it finished three-all.

Subsequently, United went to Munich and outplayed Bayern, who escaped with a draw thanks only to a last-minute Schmeichel flap. Next was a double-header with Brondby, demolished six-nil in pre-season and then twice more, an  exceptional collection of goals resulting in scores of six-two and five-nil, narrowly missing the straight sets victory. Barca, meanwhile, beat Brondby at home and lost twice to Munich.

United had managed very few decent European away efforts in Europe at this point in the Fergie aeon, but there was a feeling that this lot were different – though they’d contrived to lose three-one at Hillsborough the Saturday before. Even when things weren’t going right, they played with a merciless intensity and commitment to attack – football taught by Matt Busby, you might call it – explaining why the 2008 abhorrence in this same fixture was so very fucking insulting.

Once in front, Barcelona’s quick passing kept them in the ascendancy in the first quarter, until, from nowhere, Dwight Yorke rattled in a low shot from twenty yards. With no player has there existed a larger discrepancy between what we thought we were getting and what we were lucky enough to actually get, and this was the night he truly arrived. Fergie MANY v FEW Us.

Scores level at half-time, the second period was positively celestial. On fifty-three minutes, Cole and Yorke improvised a footballing dialogue of sickening slickness that put United ahead, and from then on, all was a mixture of colour, speed, power and geometry, heavyweights moving like lightweights and swinging for the fences in the most aesthetic way imaginable.

United’s lead lasted only four minutes, Rivaldo – whose performance was truly remarkable – equalising with a free-kick, Schmeichel guessing as to his intention just as he would at the same end against Basler a few months later, with equal success. But United didn’t pause, that useless Yorke from useless Villa why couldn’t we have signed Kluivert flinging himself into a Beckham cross to reclaim the advantage. I recall some chance-missing going on around this point, until, with sixteen minutes to go, Rivaldo controlled a cross on his chest and laced an overhead kick into the net, Stam and Neville turning away with what-can-you-do impotence.

But neither team was accepting an honourable draw. Rivaldo first astonished one against the bar, before backheeling Giovanni through to force a great save from Schmeichel, and then, in injury time, Cole and Butt both missed handy chances, so it ended three-all once again.

Drawing their final game at home to Bayern, United progressed at Barca’s expense, denying them “their final”, at the Nou Camp in their centenary year. United, on the other hand, had a decent time of it; football taught by Matt Busby, eh? Bloody hell.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9izSAOmiT4&feature=related