After Wembley, The Fightback …
Times: IT WAS THE NIGHT BEFORE THE morning after and, in the late bar at the Royal Lancaster Hotel, Manchester United’s post FA Cup Final party was feeling like a wake.
A mournful rendition of John Lennon’s Imagine was being played on the piano until the WAGs took matters into their own hands, screeching out a dirge that would have embarrassed Victoria Beckham. But, as it gradually identified itself as Queen’s We Are The Champions, the mood began to lift.
And so United’s crestfallen champions began to reflect on the trophy they had rather than the one that got away. There were chants of “We’ve got our trophy back” before Wayne Rooney, napkin on head, started to bounce up and down to the Manchester United Calypso. What, after all, are WAGs for if not raising spirits at moments such as this?
Beneath the smiles, though, a sense of frustration remained. “They were not better than us,” one player said, cursing Chelsea’s tactical approach, which he blamed for a disappointing spectacle. José Mourinho’s words in his postmatch press conference came to mind – “I asked my players: ‘Do you want to enjoy the game or do you want to enjoy after the game?’ ” – an indication that the means will always justify a successful end at Stamford Bridge.
“I hate that,” the United player said. “Good luck to them, but that isn’t the United way.” And, for as long as Sir Alex Ferguson remains in charge at Old Trafford, it never will be. The United way has brought great dividends this season, with Ferguson’s team winning as many plaudits as points as they earned the Barclays Premiership title with a cavalier approach. That was a consolation to clutch on Saturday evening, as was the knowledge that Chelsea’s players would happily have swapped the FA Cup for a third consecutive league title.
“It’s going to hurt tomorrow but we’ve had a good season,” Ryan Giggs said on his way out of Wembley Stadium. “At the start of the season, the league was our No 1 aim, but losing the final still hurts, especially because we felt we didn’t get that little bit of luck that we felt we had earned. But we can take a step back in a couple of days and appreciate that our main aim was to win the league.”
As for the open wound of the FA Cup Final defeat, it did not help that so many players had fallen below their best or that they felt they had a legitimate goal disallowed. There are numerous theories as to what Steve Bennett should have done when Petr Cech, the Chelsea goalkeeper, appeared to carry Giggs’s close-range effort over the line in the fourteenth minute of extra time; Giggs felt it was a goal, while Ferguson felt United should have had a penalty for a nudge on his captain by Michael Essien.
Such concerns, though, were partly outweighed by a feeling that United had come up just short against top-class opposition, a familiar failing this season. As merciless as they were against most of the Premiership, they failed to beat Chelsea twice in the league (two draws) and were also beaten home and away by Arsenal. Results away from home in the Champions League were also disappointing, with defeats by FC Copenhagen, Celtic and AS Roma as well as AC Milan, whose 3-0 win in the semi-final, second leg at the San Siro has given Ferguson so much food for thought.
United know they need to be even better next season, but there is still considerable pride in their success this term. “We can shake off the disappointment and look forward with confidence,” Michael Carrick said. “We’ve proved we were the best team over a long period of time. We are only going to get stronger.”
But so will Chelsea and also, presumably, Liverpool and Arsenal. “It’s up to others if they want to join the competition because the two best teams in the Premiership were here today,” Ferguson said. “I don’t see any reason why this team shouldn’t get better.”
“I’m sure there’ll be a couple of signings,” Giggs said. “The younger players are getting better and better. The manager will look to improve us. He always does.”
As if to prove it, confirmation arrived from Germany yesterday that Bayern Munich had accepted an £18 million offer from United for Owen Hargreaves. This offers a reminder that United’s success this season was achieved without the midfield enforcer that Ferguson coveted last summer – and indeed without the striker he wanted to replace Ruud van Nistelrooy.
That puts the disappointment of Saturday into some context, even if the hangovers with which some of them may have awoken seemed a heavy price to pay for drowning their sorrows.
