Football Memories: Real Madrid V Manchester United 2003

(Photo by Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)

What hapened next

Madrid were to be knocked out by Juventus in the semis, suffering a 3-1 thrashing in Turin in the second leg. Ironically Juventus themselves had been soundly beaten home and away by United in the second group stage.

The signing of David Beckham that summer was to prove the Galactico that broke the donkey's back at the Bernebau. The firing of Del Bosque, exiling of Hierro and and sale of Makelele to Chelsea were to proove disastrous and in hindisght just as crazy as it sounded at the time.

Further, Carlos Quieroz, United's assistant manager was hired as Real Madrid coach (cynics said he was hired as Beckham's translator) and a painful decline started from the pinnacle of world football circles which ended with the ignomonius departure of the galacticos policy mastermind himself, Florentino Perez three years later.

Alex Ferguson was to eventually go on to replace Beckham with Christiano Ronaldo, a little known teenager from Sporting Lisbon. Veron was to be sold to Chelsea that same summer. He never did find the form again that made him one of the world's most coveted players at Lazio . Barthez was to never play again for United after the second leg. He soon left for Marseille finding success there. Solskjaer was to become massively injury prone as he finally became a first team regular. Except he wasn't a regular because he was always injury prone which led sadly to his retirement.

United like Madrid were to suffer themselves for three years as part of the transition period to Ferguson's third great team. But whereas United did pick up the odd trophy in the meantime, Madrid were to enter an embarrassingly barren run in terms of trophies.  

But perhaps the team that benefited most from Madrid's decline was neither Juventus or United but Milan, who were to dominate European football in the mid-noughties under Ancelotti. Starting with the same 2003 CL title both United and Madrid had failed to win.

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