From atrophy to a trophy
The Under-18s were truly United
FIVE ASIDES FA Youth Cup Final: United 3, Forest 1
A trophy! United have won a trophy! For the senior squad, this season has been a saga of atrophy. From their juniors and betters, we now have a trophy – United’s first FA Youth Cup for 11 years and their 11th in all, extending their own record. For most of those 11 years this cup belonged to Chelsea, who won it five times on the trot. United did that themselves once – way back in the first five years of the Youth Cup’s existence, 1952 to 1957. So the Busby Babes won it, and now the Binnion babes have too. (That’s Travis Binnion, in case you don’t know your Under-18s lead coach from your head of academy.) United’s youth bosses are not doing it for the silverware: they care more about developing players. But a trophy is a hell of a bonus.
United needed some luck – the penalty that put them 2-1 up should have been a free kick in the D – but they were the better team. If Forest equalled them for energy and application, and surpassed them for defensive organisation, United were more creative, more attacking, more capable of rising to the occasion. In Alejandro Garnacho they have a superstar, albeit one who is, like that little prodigy we all played with at school, sometimes disinclined to pass the ball. He showed his nerve when he took the penalty, and his verve when he concocted the clincher by twisting and turning in the box. He makes a habit of scoring late goals, showing an engine to match his talent.
Even if they’d lost, the Under-18s would have done us proud. When their keeper, Radek Vitek, handed Forest the equaliser with a howler of Gary Sprake proportions, three of his team-mates ran to him with pats on the back and words of encouragement. You don’t get that from Cristiano Ronaldo. Far from being cowed by the crowd, Garnacho and Charlie McNeill were conducting it, waving their arms to whip up some noise. And neither of them is the captain. Binnion has built a team of leaders. This blog, you may have noticed, has largely refrained from blaming the players for the first team’s malaise, because the rot starts at the top and there has been so much to infuriate us from the owners, the countless executives and a miscast interim manager. But it has to be said that these boys showed the men how to perform. They played with heart and grit, hunger and gumption, tenacity and togetherness. They were properly United.
They also confirmed that all these dogged virtues can go hand-in-hand with flair. Kobbie Mainoo was two midfielders in one – a sturdy shield one minute, a shimmying playmaker the next. Sam Murray’s assist for Rhys Bennett’s goal was nervelessly nonchalant, a free kick halfway from a skim to a chip. McNeill was both an old-school No 9, a target for the long ball, and a modern one, working the channels and turning into a winger. When he came off, Joe Hugill showed why he is just as highly rated. It’s a mystery why, when all the senior strikers bar Ronaldo were either missing or out of form, Ralf Rangnick didn’t put McNeill on the bench. Does he even know how Marcus Rashford got started?
When this final was first played as a single fixture in 2019, Liverpool entertained Man City and the attendance is said to have been about 4,000. At Old Trafford last night it was 67,000. Forest brought 50-per-cent more supporters than City and Liverpool had mustered between them. At MUTV.com, the livestream was in so much demand that it wouldn’t start on my screen. On the MUTV app, the same thing happened. Half an hour later I ended up taking out a second subscription to MUTV to watch the game on the telly. All this was partly because United have more fans than any other British team. It was partly because those fans were gasping for some success. But it was also because this club has an entrenched tradition of bringing on young players. Binnion and co. are standing on the shoulders of Matt Busby, of the McGuinnesses, of Nicky Butt, of dozens of others down the decades. That is the light that is always on at Old Trafford, shining at the end of the tunnel.