Pundits Devour United After Barcelona Crash

After a comprehensive defeat, serial humiliation.

The United team returned to Manchester after losing to Barcelona in the Champions League final by so much more than the recorded two goals, to find their heads atop media poles.

The Independent’s James Lawton, king of the sporting tricoteuses, provided all the raw material Sir Alex needed for a summer of sleepless nights.

“It would be comfortable to say the champions of England were beaten,” Lawton opined. “Unfortunately, though, it ran a little deeper than that. They had been undressed and outclassed by the most beautiful team in all of football.”

Readers of the Times may have understood that Lawton had drunk too long from the well of hyperbole but it was still no comfort for the manager and his players.

The Times summary of the match performance was at least undebatable. “Barcelona won without needing to be near their best. United fell so short as to be outclassed. So short that it will be a torment for players such as Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo, not only to lose but to be made to feel so inferior.

“There was no wail of despair, no river of tears at the end, and no wonder. The revelation that it was all over brought merciful release.”

The scale of United’s fall from grace in Rome was underlined by the mention of the team in the same sentenced as ‘outclassed’ and ‘inferior’ for the first time since December 2005 or quite possibly 1974.

Reformed United basher Oliver Holt added "humiliation" to the post-match lexicon. “Barcelona did not just outplay Sir Alex Ferguson's side,” he wrote. “They humiliated them. They embarrassed them.

“None of what happened here makes United a bad side but it does put their ambitions of starting a Real Madrid-style dynasty that wins the trophy over and over again into rather sobering perspective.”

Faced with such negative press coverage, neither the manager nor his players sought to hide, equivocate or excuse a most disappointing display.

"We were well beaten, the better team won and there's nothing we can do about it now," said Sir Alex. "There's a disappointment in the performance, some individuals will feel it themselves when they look at how they played."

Defender Rio Ferdinand took up the manager’s central theme. "It's just a shame we didn't play well," he sobbed to the Guardian. "We still created five or six chances but they were the better team. You have to give credit to Barcelona. They played well. On a night like this you need to play your best football and we didn't produce it—all over the park, individually and collectively."

Star player Cristiano Ronaldo however, refused stubbornly to share in the collective guilt for the defeat. He pointed the finger of blame straight at his current manager.

"We had 10 [good] minutes and then we never found ourselves again," he complained. "The tactics were not good and everything went wrong."

Ronaldo’s indictment of Ferguson however, sits uncomfortably with the any fair assessment of the facts.

The prediction of United’s team within these pages and elsewhere some five days before Ferguson announced his selection was only possible because it was so obvious. European finals are not won by teams sacrificing midfield strength for forward flair, making United’s three man midfield a certainty. With Fletcher sidelined, Anderson, Carrick and Giggs, thanks to his performances against Chelsea and Inter Milan, looked like a winning trio.

The strength of United’s away performance against Inter Milan and later against Arsenal in both legs of the competition’s semi-final, served as the pre-match template for Ferguson.

The manager was right to be confident. All his principals were fit and in reasonable form. It seemed a divine bonus that Barcelona would take the field hobbled by the loss through suspension of several important players.

It was not to be.

That does not excuse pundits for the zeal of their withering destructions of the manager and his team after a truly awful night. United's magnificent season entitled the team to a reaction which came with rather less heat and rather more light.

Perhaps the unkindest cut was the accusation that United had no ‘Plan B’ after falling behind to Barcelona’s early opener. In recent years, it has become commonplace to see Ferguson as something of a tactical dinosaur, reliant on progressive coaches to supplement his supreme man-management. This is an obvious canard. A shrewd manager such as Ferguson does not outsource totally the tactics of his team to a deputy.

Thus, pundits invite ridicule for suggesting that United, from the field to the bench, were befuddled by Barcelona’s third gear mastery of the final proceedings, to the point where they could offer little to no resistance.

Surely Ferguson was as surprised as watching fans to see his team’s poise and precision crumble against highly skilled opponents. United’s team list is replete with top internationals who have spent the previous three years Hoovering up trophies the world over. Ronaldo-apart, the collective freeze that overcame the side in Rome, was as unexpected as it was dreadful to behold.

The manager’s ‘Plan B’ in the circumstances was to throw on his four principal strike threats and hope for a goal. “United always score” is the stuff of football legend and Ferguson must have hoped that the gods would be with him again as they were so often in the past, most recently against Villa and Spurs at home and most famously against Bayern Munich 10 years ago.

It was not to be.

It is easy to criticise the manager for a simple-minded approach. Four-two-four is a throwback to the 1960’s with limited purchase in today’s sporting arenas, especially when the opponent is Barcelona, a side which prizes keeping possession of the ball.

Yet imagine the uproar if United had kept either Tevez or Berbatov, or even both on the bench and Barcelona still claimed the trophy? Ferguson would have been hung and haunted for a lack of ambition and much more besides.

Such truths however are insufficient to impress the press box Quintuple winners who read the game solely through the prism of defeat and roundly chastised the manager and his team.

Ryan Giggs may protest that United have won three trophies this season but some pundits with columns to write and airtime to fill are all too ready to cast aside such evidence and predict a summer of upheaval.

The Independent printed a list of players who might be possible transfer targets for Sir Alex. It read like a fantasy love interest selection produced by a fourth form schoolboy.

Better fare was on offer at Sky Sports. “The season will always be tinged with the disappointment that they came up short in the biggest game of all,” offered football analyst Andy Gray.

Few would quibble with that assessment. Rather more might take issue with the some of his other points.

“Apart from Ronaldo and Carrick I have always thought the United midfield was a little short at the very highest level,” he continued.

Really? Did Gray offer this opinion when United carried off the Double last year?

The pundit added. “The use of Rooney has not been in the player's best interests at times, while Dimitar Berbatov's lack of commitment and performance hasn't helped things. Along with Carlos Tevez, those three forwards are probably worth £75million on the open market—and it's astonishing to think two of them were sitting on the bench in Rome.”

Fans remain perplexed by the obvious blunting of Rooney’s potential to cause havoc by stationing him out on the wing. Yet, the deployment is in service to the overall team plan, a strategy that has proved highly satisfactory in recent times. The barbs about Berbatov and Tevez undermine Gray’s ranking as an authoritative commentator.

The former Aston Villa and Wolves striker did revive his reputation later with a reasonable account of how Ferguson might attempt to pilot his team to a third consecutive European final, in what may still be the manager’s last year at the helm.

“The current squad will need to improve their own performances or else Sir Alex will need to bring in better players,” Gray added. “I certainly think they need a left-sided player.

“I also think he needs another player alongside Carrick in midfield and maybe he needs a right-back unless he has confidence in Rafael da Silva. I feel he will want to bring in two or maybe three players to slot into those positions.”

The Guardian’s always prudent Kevin McCarra also speculated on the future and like Dad’s Army’s Captain Manwaring, invited fans not to panic.

The tone for an absorbing article was set by McCarra’s opening salvo. “It hurts to lose a European Cup final, but the lingering ache was not inflicted by the result alone,” he began. “Manchester United were forced to endure their own inadequacy at Stadio Olimpico. A club in those circumstances often consoles itself by imagining rejuvenation through wholesale change, but Sir Alex Ferguson cannot turn to such fantasies. He has already pieced together a fine and relatively young squad.”

However, the “fine squad” Sir Alex has assembled looks set to be depleted by the loss of Cristiano Ronaldo.

“Real Madrid will chase the signature of Ronaldo from Manchester United this summer as eagerly as they did that of David Beckham because they want to rebuild the club’s image and economy around the Portugal forward, “ the Times told its readers.

The newspaper also claimed that Sir Alex should take his cue from arch nemesis Rafa Benitez and flog that waster Dimitar Berbatov. 

Andy Gray may well have spat coffee on the kitchen wall when he read over breakfast that: "It is time for Ferguson to hold his hands up, Benitez-style, and concede his Berbatov experiment has failed.”

The Times added: “There would be no shame in it. Berbatov’s supreme technical qualities made him a punt worth taking when Ferguson recruited him for a club record £30.75m, but like Juan Sebastian Veron, he looks a serious talent who simply does not suit United.

“One thing the Bulgarian and Argentinian have in common is their laconic playing styles. Fast, percussive attacking is the United way and though Berbatov’s ability to hold the ball and use it unhurriedly is what made him attractive to Ferguson, it has also posed a problem.

“Press room arguments have raged about Berbatov all season. Maestro or dilettante? Once I was firmly in the former camp but the season’s climax has been chastening for Berbatov fans—and that, deep down, must surely include Ferguson.”

The Times scribbler also positioned Carlos Tevez for the guillotine. This was good news for  the News of The World football seers who were telling anyone who would listen that Carlos Tevez would be moving to City in a deal worth £32 million.

So who will be joining the champions of England and the world, Europe now excluded? Take your pick from Kaka, Valencia, Benzema and Ribéry.

More names will be added as more names are taken away from the list and then United will start the next season with one, possibly two new faces. It’s the £750 million debt, you see. And the manager’s firm belief in a fine squad.