SOCCER, BLOODY HELL, AS Joel Glazer and his band of brothers might say. With a free weekend after the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ elimination from the play-offs for the Super Bowl, Florida’s finest made a rare visit to Old Trafford yesterday and, perhaps for the first time, they might have left feeling that they had seen something of the real Manchester United.
Perhaps “seen” is not the right word, given that most of the football came from Liverpool, but if they did not learn something about United from the scenes and the noise that greeted Rio Ferdinand’s 90th-minute winner, they never will. Ecstasy was etched on the face of every United supporter and, in the case of Wayne Rooney and Gary Neville, the latter sprinting almost the length of the pitch to celebrate riotously in front of the away team’s supporters, the emotions went farther, to something approaching hatred.
Such are the stakes in this of all matches. Sir Alex Ferguson said on Friday that this fixture “reminds me why I’m here”, referring to his challenge of “knock Liverpool off their f***ing perch” when he arrived in Manchester in 1986. The Merseyside club, as it transpired, managed a good enough job of that themselves, but, for Ferguson, Neville and Rooney, just as for the most fervent United supporter, there is little else in these impoverished days to beat the satisfaction of quelling the latest uprising from down the East Lancs Road.
As such, the scenes sparked by Ferdinand’s header evoked memories of the 1990s, when Liverpool would swagger into Old Trafford each year, only to be sent home with their tails between their legs, but it was not quite like that yesterday. The Liverpool revival under Rafael Benítez is every bit as real as United’s decline over the past few years. This was a gloriously satisfying victory for United, a reminder of the times when they would routinely score late winners at the Stretford End, but the comparisons with the glory days did not go much farther.
Time will tell whether a first defeat in 13 Premiership matches has a deflating effect on a Liverpool team entering their most demanding period of the season, but on the balance of play yesterday, it was hard to escape the conclusion that the second-best team in England were the ones wearing white shirts. Liverpool controlled the game throughout, with Steven Gerrard and Mohammed Sissoko dwarfing the relative pygmies in a makeshift home midfield, but were made to pay the price for retreating fatally when the United rally came, largely courtesy of Rooney and Ryan Giggs.
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Ferdinand’s third goal in nine Premiership games, a thumping header from a Giggs free kick, was enough to silence the Scouse hordes inside the ground and to end an unbeaten sequence that had yielded 34 points for Benítez’s team, but above all it was a triumph of spirit, given the mismatch in the middle of the park. Even with a fully fit midfield, it is doubtful whether United could live with Gerrard, Sissoko and Xabi Alonso, but with Paul Scholes and Alan Smith missing, they were left with John O’Shea partnering Giggs. It was no surprise that Liverpool dominated possession, but for all the promptings of Gerrard, they could not engineer a breakthrough, with Djibril Cissé far too casual when superbly picked out by his captain in the 32nd minute.
A rib injury to O’Shea forced Ferguson into a reshuffle at half-time, but the impetus remained with the away team, who should have taken the lead 18 minutes into the second half, with Cissé culpable once more. Ferdinand did superbly to clear his own touch off the line from Sissoko’s cross and, when the ball ran loose, Harry Kewell sent a fierce shot goalwards, prompting Edwin van der Sar to spill it at the feet of Cissé, but the France forward, six yards out with the goal at his mercy, shot over the bar.
Liverpool seemed to settle for a point after that, but they were denied as Rooney dragged United forward. Benítez was fretting on the touchline as his players conceded one needless set-piece after another and perhaps it was frustration with that, rather than the incident itself, that led him to protest so vehemently when Steve Finnan brought down Patrice Evra with the clock ticking down. When Giggs swung the ball in, Ferdinand rose highest and José Manuel Reina could only palm the ball into the net.
Such an irregular goalscorer in the past, Ferdinand is making a habit of being in the right place in the right time. It goes without saying these days that Sven-Göran Eriksson was not, having taken his leave minutes earlier, but the three American brothers who left the directors’ box shortly afterwards were smiling.