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Publish Date: Wednesday, April 10, 2019 9:42 am
This is a sign of Manchester United's status in 2019 that Steve McManaman spent the majority of his clashes in Barcelona telling us that United was the "best team" and noting that Lionel Messi was "human after all" since He clearly had a night of rest. ". It was the Manchester United that failed to record a single shot on target at home; It was not the color of Lionel Messi, whose sumptuous cross led to the only goal of the match. In 2019, even the worst of Barcelona can beat the best of Manchester United without ever really losing the sweat.
Scary, this was the best of United. They were energetic, organized, and looked dangerous when they broke at full speed. Fred and Scott McTominay's central midfielder was both compact and combative. Chris Smalling has kept his promise of savoring a potentially one – sided clash with Messi and Diogo Dalot has combined his offensive and defensive duties with the confidence of a footballer with much more experience. And yet, they have not once tested the Barcelona goalkeeper at an evening when the Spaniards were incredibly poor by their own impossible standards. It is suspected that they will not be so poor anymore and United has missed its chance to shed blood.
The standards have dropped so much since United's defeat against Barcelona in the 2011 final that many fans were just happy to avoid the mollusks, to salute the performance of the marginal players and not to linger too long. On the fact that United only created one real chance in A Old Trafford, Dalot's header was inexplicably put at the bottom of the nets. Despite all the hard work, all the energy, all the efforts, it was like Brighton, which limited Manchester City to a 1-0 defeat. Tap on the head all around.
A positive speech about United's disciplined performance could not hide a chronic lack of quality in the last third. When Darren Fletcher described a center of Ashley Young as "strange", who among those watching did not laugh? What would have really been "strange" was a cross that had found a teammate, because this cross was one of 11 that had not reached its target. Young may lament the lack of corpses in the surface, but in reality, it was the story of a former 33-year-old winger who should be far away from all United teams. Not even this United side.
United 's fans were dismayed when the club paid a hefty sum for Young in 2011, and the player himself admitted that it would be a "challenge" to establish his place in a team that had just come in. reach the final of the Champions League. The fact that he was their first-choice right-back nearly eight years later should be a source of shame for those who were accused of making decisions at Old Trafford during this period of sharp decline.
It is painfully clear that United must spend this summer to take steps towards the European elite, to embark on games like anything other than the underdogs, not having the feeling of playing five defenders is their only option even at Old Trafford, not to play the matches so pbadively that even a poor Barcelona team could not miss a goal early in the game. United has not won a single game this season while he started with a record of three / five, and he has already tried seven times. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer made a mistake and yet you can see why he made that mistake. In spite of his eloquent speech on United's rich history, he knows that this team is currently lacking the quality needed to make the future no longer a pale imitation of the past.
There were positives, even in defeat, and even in such an educated defeat. But it's a sad day when Manchester United go into the quarter-finals of the Champions League looking for positives rather than results.
Sarah Winterburn
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