FIVE ASIDES Champions League: United 0, Atletico 1 (agg 1-2)
It was good to see Michael Carrick at Old Trafford last night, but there was just one problem: he wasn’t in the technical area. Carrick had one Champions League game as manager – also against a streetwise Spanish side, Villarreal – and handled it shrewdly, drawing on his vast Champions League know-how. Ralf Rangnick doesn’t have that and it showed. Diego Simeone played his favourite role as the professor of the dark arts; Rangnick was more like a well-meaning supply teacher. Simeone’s players, with their time-wasting and play-acting, were shitty but effective, making full use of a feeble referee. Carrick might not have done any better than Rangnick in the first half, when United played well apart from allowing themselves to be sliced open twice. But he would have done far better in the second half, when Rangnick threw organisation to the winds. If United had wanted that kind of manager, they could have kept Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. As it was, they appointed Carrick for just three games, before letting him and Kieran McKenna go. Within a fortnight McKenna was snapped up by Ipswich, who have been doing far better since he arrived. When Carrick and McKenna were replaced by Rangnick and (in due course) Chris Armas, United may well have lost more managerial talent than they acquired.
In the 66th minute Bruno Fernandes whipped a free kick to the far post, aiming at Cristiano Ronaldo and Harry Maguire – who headed each other. It was all too symbolic: a clash of heads between the man who is meant to be United’s leader on the field and the one whose massive fame makes him the focal point and therefore hard to captain. The biggest head banged into the biggest name. Seventeen minutes later, Maguire was taken off and many United fans cheered. If that was harsh, it was also fair. On form Maguire should be United’s fifth-choice centre-back, behind Rapha Varane, Victor Lindelof, Eric Bailly and even dear old Phil Jones.
After taking one step forward against Spurs, United took a step back again – to doing things by halves. They started brightly, all crisp passes and fluid movement. Fred was so far forward that the formation was often a 4-1-4-1, and he even performed like a Brazilian, fortified by the flick that had set up Ronaldo’s first goal against Spurs. The snag was that with Scott McTominay left alone in the engine room, United were asking for trouble on the counter. And, as in the first leg, the best Portuguese forward on the field was Joao Felix. Ronaldo’s only shot was an overhead kick, ruled out by the whistle, so he went down in the ledger as having no shots at all. Of the 12 attempts on goal United did have, four fell to Diogo Dalot. The fluidity of the front four early on may have bamboozled Atletico, but it also marginalised Ronaldo. He no longer has the pace to drift wide in mid-move and make it into the six-yard box for a tap-in.
Rangnick’s substitutions were all over the place. He showed his lack of Champions League nous by making little use of players who had plenty of it. He should have sent Edinson Cavani and Juan Mata on earlier. He should have left Bruno Fernandes on (even when recovering from Covid, he had United’s best shot from distance and created their best chance, for Anthony Elanga). He should have taken Jadon Sancho off (no end product). He should have left Fred on (those flicks were needed against a low block). He should have kept Marcus Rashford on the bench (no chance to counter-attack) and sent on Jesse Lingard (creative in tight spaces). Above all, he should have maintained some structure. When they lost their shape, United also lost their rag. Their best players in the dying minutes were the two men who kept calm, Mata and Varane.
So United crash out of the Champions League yet again. Since reaching the final 11 years ago, they have won two knock-out ties out of 14 (drawn four, lost eight). When they meet a Spanish team, the same thing nearly always happens: United draw one leg and lose the other. This has been true under six different managers, including (whisper it) Alex Ferguson in his last two seasons. We’ve got to face the facts: they’re a Europa League team. When they get into the Champions League, they can manage the odd stirring night, like PSG away in 2019, but they are way below the big boys – Bayern, Liverpool, Chelsea and even City, who have, of course, yet to win the thing. By hiring Rangnick, United made sure they would stay outside that elite for another year. By steering them through to the last 16, Carrick didn’t exactly do them a favour. If they’d tumbled into the Europa, it would have been a blow to their pride but a big boost to their chances of a trophy. Still, it looks as if they’ll get there soon enough.