Manchester United, and a season saved through serenity

Daniel Storey
during the UEFA Europa League Final between Ajax and Manchester United at Friends Arena on May 24, 2017 in Stockholm, Sweden.

Manchester United’s players knew that Wednesday evening would be a testing experience: compartmentalising emotional strain is a difficult and unpredictable exercise. Yet they also entered Stockholm’s Friends Arena knowing  they needed to achieve total focus on the task at hand, to ensure that only sporting demands were front and centre of attention. After a season of forward steps followed by backward stumbles, there could be no excuses.

The cliche is that events such as those on Monday evening put football into perspective, demonstrating how little it matters, but the reality is different. Rather than rendering football meaningless, tragedy actually increases the importance of the trivial. If football doesn’t matter then music, art and literature don’t matter, and that is a nonsense statement. These are our escapes from life’s rigours. As we are tested, so too the necessity for these escapes grows. It shouldn’t take such a terrible event to give you a grip on reality, for nothing has changed. Football matters because it does not matter.

Whatever the travails of their home city, Manchester United needed this. Fail to beat Ajax and win the Europa League, and the club’s sponsorship deal with Adidas would be worth £50m less, and they could kiss their hopes goodbye of signing Antoine Griezmann, Kylian Mbappe or any other star that saw playing in Europe’s elite competition as more important than their bank balance.

It was more important still to Jose Mourinho, who had not so much put all his eggs in one basket as balanced his last egg on the point of his nose as he walked around Stockholm. Any United supporter who believes that this was always Mourinho’s preferential route into the Champions League should have taken off their red-tinted spectacles and had another ponder.

The Europa League was Manchester United’s Plan C that became Mourinho’s only option. Last July, their new manager spoke of title challenges and a mentality of never accepting second place. By October it became clear that United were in a fight for a place in the top four. By March, waving the white flag in domestic competition was the only viable option. It had to be this, and it was. Mourinho is still the man of many finals. Many successful ones, at that.

United have hardly enjoyed a serene Europa League campaign. They lost to Feyenoord and Fenerbahce in the group stages, before squeezing past Rostov, Anderlecht and Celta Vigo in three of the four knock-out rounds. Each of those second-leg performances brought the dark humour from supporters that comes with a team performing far below its potential.

If United’s season had been hamstrung by sluggish play and poor finishing, Ajax were the antithesis of that. Peter Bosz selected the youngest team ever to start a major European final, a band of young brothers who play with vibrancy and verve. Ajax’s starting line-up cost £15m to assemble, United’s £257m; the comparisons were inevitable.

Yet youth is like any extreme; it can only be positive up to a point. Boasting the youngest starting XI is a nice statistic and indicative of a club committed to sustainable development, but youthfulness is a short step from naivety. Unpredictability is a difficult characteristic to manage in a European final. You can win things with kids, but even Alex Ferguson’s side that provoked that famous quote had old heads to guide the young.

Against Manchester United’s experience, Ajax’s players were rabbits in the headlights. Passes were misplaced, defenders caught out of position and Kasper Dolberg left worryingly isolated. His first touch of the match came from the kick-off following Paul Pogba’s opening goal.

That first goal was soaked in inexperience, left-back Jaïro Riedewald sending his throw-in infield rather than down the line. Marouane Fellaini pounced, played the ball to Pogba and the subsequent shot looped over Andre Onana. From then on, United were virtually untouchable.

It is a slightly uncharitable statement, but Ajax looked like a team used to dominating inferior Eredivisie teams – a league they didn’t win but in which Ricky van Wolfswinkel scored 20 goals – but who were bullied by the bigger boys. They were all physically inferior to Fellaini, who won headers in the opposition half almost at will and played superbly.

Not that United were particularly fluent – they barely needed to be. Having started quickly, they retreated into their shells after taking the lead, the party trick of their season. Pogba was the exception, stepping up in a big game and dominating central midfield; Ajax’s players were shouldered off the ball and left chasing shadows. When Ajax did win possession, they were reliant on Bertrand Traore beating three or four players just to create a chance. With United sat deep, that was always one step too far.

The second half was verging on dull, but see if you can find any United supporter who cares a jot. Their club has now completed the set of European trophies, and progressed through an emotional evening with the serenity of a swan enjoying its first swim of the summer. The doubts about Mourinho in the Premier League this season will not disappear into this Stockholm night, but this has been a troubling season with a sweet finish. This may not have been a marauding, effervescent performance, but it was a display fit for a final when only the result lasts long in the memory. Nobody remembers how poorly the opposition played.

Mourinho came into the Europa League final with his season, if not quite his reputation, on the line. As Sir Alex Ferguson applauded from the stands and his team prepared to lift their trophy, Mourinho’s smile said it all. So too did his celebrations, like nothing we have seen from him in years.

Rather than Thursday nights with BT Sport, Manchester United will look forward to Tuesdays and Wednesdays with Griezmann. You will forgive United supporters for quickly forgetting the monotony of those Premier League draws.

Daniel Storey