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Olé Gunnar Solskjaer's tenure as Manchester United's interim manager has been universally compared to Sir Alex Ferguson's life: swashbuckling, offensive football, players expressing, a chance given to youngsters, to play for the badge. and play with heart, and win seven successive Premier League matches. However, during a dark and dreary February night at Old Trafford last Tuesday, another similarity appeared, much less welcome: it faltered in the knockout stages of the UEFA Champions League.
Instantly, experts like Arsene Wenger, the press and Solskjaer himself stressed that it was a "reality check", evoking the gap that separates this united clbad from the European elite, such as PSG. . You could almost close your eyes and hear a thousand wise men, caressing their beards and nodding wisely, saying that this was inevitable, that the Solskjaer factor was like a currency exceeding its real value in the market, that it was not. team-reaching, performing above its true capacity.
I do not buy it.
Is there a gap between the teams of Paris St Germain and Manchester United who took the field on Tuesday? No, there is not any. At worst, there is a slight difference in clbad, but certainly not a sinkhole, especially without Neymar and Cavani on the side of the PSG. And if we are honest, the game was lost not because of United's defensive weaknesses, but in the area where United has some of the most coveted players in the world. United simply has not created much.
Of course, United's cause was not helped by the loss of Anthony Martial and Jesse Lingard, but it looks like it would not have been possible otherwise if they had stayed. There was something strangely familiar in the performance of the team as a whole, a sort of jitter that we saw over and over under Sir Alex when United reached the playoffs of the Champions League.
The story has a repetitive pattern. United reached the round of 16 in 1996-7 after losing to Borussia Dortmund in the semi-finals. The next season was a similar story, go to Monaco on the away goals rule in the quarterfinals. And although United won its first Champions League title the following year, it's a great win. the team played no match at its best against Bayern Munich and was still nervous at its big European night.
Then came Real Madrid and Bayern defeats in the quarter-finals, Bayer Leverkusen in the semifinals and Real again in the quarter-finals when a brilliant (Brazilian) Ronaldo managed a hat trick at Old Trafford. The trend continued, losing in the knockout stages against Porto in 2003/2004 and Milan in 2004/5, followed by a knockout stage and another defeat by Milan in 2006/7.
The final victory in Moscow against Chelsea in 2007/08 is another bad performance of United that was saved by the exploits of Edwin Van der Sar on penalties. This was followed by two last defeats against Barcelona, interspersed with another quarter-final defeat against Bayern. The last two seasons of Sir Alex at the helm have been marked by a failure in the group stage and a defeat in the round of 16 against Real Madrid.
Does it mean any case of an abyss in clbad? Perhaps in the case of Real, Zidane and Ronaldo and almost certainly in that of Iniesta and Messi of Barcelona, but the common factor in the rest of these games (and probably also in the Barcelona games) was the underperformance of United.
And yes, last Tuesday. Pogba and Herrera simply did not play. Shaw and Young seemed to be afraid of going ahead and Martial and Lingard's performances were unconvincing even before they got hurt. Nemanja Matic played at his normal level, but no one around him did it.
Why does United freeze on those big European nights? Is the "you score two and we are going to score three" approach that works so well in the Premier League just not working against the biggest European teams? Or are they simply exhausted by the weight of expectations, the meaning of the story that is waiting to be created?
I do not deny that the current team needs to be improved to allow United to join the world elite. But the mentality must be the right one, whatever the caliber of the player in the team. If United must be eliminated, I want to see them lose their best football, not looking like rabbits caught in the lighthouses. Gulf in clbad? Gulf in self-confidence? May be.
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