Triple whammy: Cavani, Fernandes and Pogba at their best
United-Roma was a drama with three leading men
When playing Roma, do as the Romans once did: place your trust in a triumvirate. At Old Trafford on Thursday night, the Man of the Match award needed to be split three ways. Bruno Fernandes, Edinson Cavani and Paul Pogba were sharper than a devil’s trident.
Between them they scored five of United’s six goals – the first five. It was as if the three of them were playing a private game within a game. The first goal, a work of art from start to finish, was prepared by Pogba, with a strong-armed run past three opponents, assisted by Cavani with a precision through ball played off balance with his weaker foot, and scored by Fernandes with a particularly dinky dink. Then United somehow went behind, after Pogba was penalised for a handball he could hardly avoid, and the McFred safety net collapsed at the wrong moment to give Edin Dzeko his traditional Old Trafford goal. United were so rattled that even Cavani missed a sitter.
This gang, though, always get better after half-time, and soon they were turning their semi-final jinx into semi-final high jinks. Pogba found Cavani, who found Fernandes, who found Cavani with another dink that sat up to be thumped into the top corner. At 2-2, the game was still shaping up as a better result for Roma than for United, but 16 minutes later, along the edge of the area, Pogba found Fernandes again. He went wide to Aaron Wan-Bissaka, whose shot Roma’s reserve goalie could only place at the feet of Cavani, for a sitter he couldn’t miss.
“Fernandes, Cavani and Pogba collected four assists and five goals. But the three performances were even greater than the sum of their stats"
Cavani then won a penalty, from poor old Chris Smalling, that was just as dubious as the Roma one – from an alleged infringement that took place on virtually the same piece of turf as Pogba’s handball, as Paul Howarth pointed out in a tweet to @United_Writing. Fernandes, of course, converted the penalty, belting it like a free kick. He now had two goals on the night, as many as in the previous two months. Five minutes later he had two assists, stroking a curling first-time cross from the De Bruyne zone that produced a punchy header from Pogba. The game, which had been open all along, was now a barn door in a gale. Cavani sprayed a fabulous long ball off the outside of his right foot, and Mason Greenwood took two touches with his left before finishing with his right – the sorcerer supplying his apprentice.
So between the three of them, Fernandes, Cavani and Pogba collected four assists to go with the five goals. If we counted pre-assists, which we surely will soon, there were two of those as well – arguably three – from Pogba. These three superstars had been so good that United’s fourth one, Marcus Rashford, was barely needed. After being exiled to the right wing, he must surely go back to the left on Sunday to torment Trent Alexander-Arnold.
Solskjaer’s decision to rest Pogba and Cavani at Leeds last weekend, though painful at the time, had paid off handsomely. His decision to play McFred here, which had backfired in the first half, worked out well in the end – and Fred, to be fair, played a fine first-time flick, straight from the Fernandes playbook, to set Pogba free in the sequence that led to the second goal.
But Fred’s role, like Wan-Bissaka’s, was just a bit part. This riveting drama was all about the fact that there were three leading men. It’s something football, like the film world with its prizes, finds difficult to recognise. ‘Solskjaer smiling as Cavani and Fernandes lead rout,’ said the headline in this morning’s Guardian. ‘Bruno and Cavani show gives United one foot in final,’ said The Times. Pogba, for once, was invisible. But he was indispensable.
The three performances were even greater than the sum of their stats. They were a joy to watch as three gifted individuals slotted together to form a team within a team, three fine football brains found the same wavelength, and three men from different countries, one of whom has yet to learn English, spoke the same language. Two of them had been widely tipped to leave United in the summer, but that looks less likely now. They're having far too much fun.