The night that defined Bryan Robson
As Barcelona beckon again, it's time to relive United's finest performance against them
Manchester United have faced Barcelona three times in European finals, but their most memorable encounter was none of the above. It was the second leg of a Cup Winners' Cup quarter-final in 1984, it was Diego Maradona’s first club game in England, and one of the all-time great footballers found himself upstaged by two other members of the cast: Bryan Robson, who was the personification of heroism, and the crowd.
No discussion of the game is complete without a nod to the atmosphere, the best ever heard – and felt – at Old Trafford. The cliché of the crowd being the 12th man certainly applied that night. Prawn sandwiches were not on the menu, though raw steak might have been. ‘A crowd of more than 58,000 simply refused to countenance the possibility of defeat,' wrote David Lacey in the Guardian, ‘and in the end their raucous, passionate support persuaded United of the truth of it.’
The fans may have thought their team had a chance, but few others did. In the first leg United had completed an unlikely trio of cup defeats away from home – beginning at Oxford and Bournemouth, both of the third division – with a frustrating 2-0 loss in Barcelona. The teenage centre-back Graeme Hogg scored an own goal on his European debut, and Juan Carlos Rojo’s storming last-minute volley ramped the difficulty level up a few more notches. ‘It was a nothing game,’ says the then United manager, Ron Atkinson. ‘We were ordinary, but we were in no trouble at 1-0.’
Nobody was more frustrated than Robson, who had missed an easy chance at 1-0. 'That really annoyed me,’ he said in the book We’re The Famous Man United, ‘and revved me up a wee bit for the second leg.’ Yes, a wee bit.
Robson’s future was in considerable doubt at the time. Between the first and second leg Atkinson said he would be sold to an Italian club for £3m: he was thought to be close to joining Juventus or Internazionale. United received petitions imploring them not to sell him.
That aside, all was well in United’s world ahead of the second leg on 21 March 1984. They were unbeaten in 16 league games and went top four days before the Barcelona game by walloping Arsenal 4-0. The team was unchanged, with Hogg continuing to be preferred to Paul McGrath and Atkinson persisting with the unusual system that we could now call a diamond. It allowed Robson to have the most productive goalscoring season of his career – 18 in 47 games.
Man Utd (4-D-2) Bailey; Duxbury, Moran, Hogg, Albiston; Wilkins; Moses, Muhren; Robson; Stapleton, Whiteside (Hughes).
Barcelona (4-3-3) Urruti; Gerardo, Moratalla, Alexanco, Julio Alberto; Victor, Schuster, Periko Alonso (Clos); Marcos Alonso, Maradona, Rojo.
Before the game the United chairman, Martin Edwards, said to Atkinson, ‘You'll hear a noise tonight like you've never heard before.’ The same was true of the Barcelona players. Old Trafford turned into a bouncy castle long before kick-off. ‘The noise which greeted Uinted at the start made one’s ears, even one’s bones vibrate,’ wrote David Millar in the Times. ‘As the smoggy air drifted across the floodlights there was a wonderful sense of theatre.’
It gave the players even greater energy. ‘I had never before heard such fervour and I haven't experienced it since,’ said Norman Whiteside in his autobiography. ‘It almost lifted me off my feet so I could play at the very limit of what my body was capable of doing.’ Robson did that most weeks, but even by his stratospheric standards this was exceptional.
Barcelona were one of Europe’s giants, even if they were not quite as powerful as they later became. They had not won the league for a decade – this was during the ‘new firm’ era of Real Sociedad and Athletic Bilbao, and they won only two titles between 1960 and 1991 – but they had seven Spanish internationals, their two foreign players were Maradona and Bernd Schuster, and they were managed by the great Cesar Luis Menotti. They had won the Cup Winners’ Cup twice in the previous five years, and in almost three decades of European competition had only once gone out after winning the first leg. They had never given up a two-goal lead.
Remi Moses and Robson harassed Rojo straight from the kick-off, setting the tone and whipping the crowd up some more. Moments later Maradona put a crossfield pass straight into touch, prompting huge cheers and a rendition of a song later reserved for ITV’s Elton Welsby. After five minutes Jose Alexanko, who had kicked Whiteside all over the place with impunity in the 1982 World Cup in Spain, was put into an advertising hoarding – by Whiteside. ‘He cemented him,’ said Robson.
Barcelona started to wear the fearful expressions of men who had taken the wrong turn in the wrong town on the wrong evening. ‘It's not that they didn't fancy it,’ said Ray Wilkins, ‘but they were looking over their shoulders.’ None more so than the goalkeeper Urruti, who was almost hit by a shoe thrown from the Stretford End at the start of the second half and was a bag of nerves all night. ‘The crowd was so intimidating and piled so much pressure on him,’ said his opposite number Gary Bailey. ‘He just couldn't cope.’
Urruti’s early error allowed Whiteside to lob against the top of the bar. Robson’s diving header put United ahead midway through the first half; then, after half-time, came two of the most joyous minutes ever played at Old Trafford. The second goal, again from Robson, summed up Barcelona’s disarray. Victor played a dodgy backpass to Urruti, who was under pressure from Whiteside and decided to kick it towards the wing rather than use his hands. ‘He probably thought I was going to trample on his fingers,’ said Whiteside, knowing full well that’s precisely what he was going to do, ‘so hacked it away with his foot instead.’ When the ball came back in, Urruti miserably fumbled Wilkins’ shot and allowed Robson to score.
‘How dare Manchester United consider selling this man?’ screamed the ITV commentator Martin Tyler. Within 82 seconds of the goal, United went 3-0 up through Robson’s raking pass, Arthur Albiston’s cross, Whiteside’s header back and, with the defenders staggering all over the place, Stapleton’s finish. We don’t have Opta stats to show these things, but the noise at that moment must surely have been the loudest in Old Trafford history. Stapleton said the atmosphere was ‘easily the best I heard at Old Trafford,’ and this from a man whose FA Cup winner against Everton a year earlier almost registered on the Richter scale.
There were still nearly 50 minutes to go when Stapleton scored. United had two chances to go 4-0 up, with Urruti saving from Moses and Robson’s flying header going over the bar. Then, human nature being what it is, United sat back and Barcelona had their best spell. The third goal had taken the draw out of the equation, so the all-or-nothing tension that is unique to European football started to spread around Old Trafford. Bailey had to make some decent saves and there were two huge scares, with Schuster whipping a curling shot just wide and the substitute Mark Hughes lucky not to concede a penalty for a clumsy tackle on Gerardo. ‘We took the third goal too early,’ said Atkinson in the tunnel straight afterwards. ‘The last quarter of an hour seemed like three days.’
United held on, if a little desperately at times. Wilkins, already booked, went through Rojo with a two-footed challenge that would bring a straight red nowadays. Hogg, with help from Wilkins, Moses and Kevin Moran, played beautifully against Maradona; at the age of 19, this was his career highlight. Moran still had enough adrenaline to go charging upfield on his own as the final whistle went to another almighty roar. A pitch invasion followed, with Robson the recipient of an affectionate mass molestation. He was chaired off by a group that included the son of Paddy Crerand, who received a bollocking from his old man for going on the pitch.
‘For days I was on an adrenaline rush,’ said Wilkins, who didn’t sleep at all on the night of the game. Atkinson did eventually, but only after an impromptu party in his office with some Spanish friends from the Midlands. ‘We ended up arguing about the Armada!’ he says. ‘How that came up I don’t know.’ But the comedown was almost as great as the high. With Robson injured, United’s season unravelled. They lost heroically in the semi-finals to Juventus, the best team on the continent, and somehow finished fourth in a two-horse race as Liverpool won another championship.
Robson says that another performance against Barcelona was his best for United, when he subtly controlled the 1991 Cup Winners’ Cup final at the age of 34. Nobody is listening. This will always define him. Sometimes there is a feeling that, after such an epic victory, you have to go on to win the trophy to really make it count. Not with Barcelona 1984. A night like that lasts forever.
Rob Smyth is a sportswriter for The Guardian and co-founder of United Writing. An earlier version of this piece appeared in Red Issue in 2014.