United's Treble is still unique

City getting one too wouldn't be the end of the world: 1999 has a glory, glory all its own

Will Grigg, Fernando Llorente, Ross Barkley, Hakim Ziyech, Sadio Mane and Ilkay Gundogan all have an identical Manchester United record: 0 appearances, 1 goal. In the last five seasons, they have scored goals that ensured either Manchester City or Liverpool could not do the Treble – or, in one viscerally disgusting case, the Quadruple.

This year there’s a resignation among United fans that the list is full and that, on 10 June in Istanbul, City are going to party like it’s 1999. While it’s not exactly a utopian scenario, especially as it could involve an FA Cup final pasting for United, it’s not necessarily that big a deal. A City Treble certainly doesn’t induce as much dread as the prospect of Liverpool winning their first league title since 1990 on Sir Alex Ferguson’s watch. Before Federico Macheda’s intervention in 2009, in particular, some of us were desperately looking up retreats in the Kerguelen Islands¹.

It might be because I’m not the fan I’m used to be, or I might look at this in a month’s time from the Kerguelen Islands’ only internet cafe and realise it was the height of naivety, but the prospect of City doing the Treble doesn’t trouble me that much. Or, at least, it doesn’t trouble me in the context of United’s Treble. From the moment that happened – and the feeling was identical at the end of the 2005 Ashes – I felt a certainty, both smug and bittersweet, that it could never be equalled, never mind surpassed.

That view wouldn’t have changed had Liverpool done the Quadruple last year, or indeed United in 2008-09. (Easy to forget, given the way the season ended, that they were only three games away.) If we’re going to judge seasons solely on trophies, City’s domestic treble of 2018-19 was more meaningful than Spurs’ Double in 1960-61, and United’s 2008-09 season trumps 1992-93. This is demonstrable poppycock. You can’t quantify glory.

United’s Treble will always be unique. They were the first to do it, not just in England but any of Europe’s big five leagues², and did so with a team full of homegrown players. Most importantly, it was the perfect case study in the things Opta can’t measure: drama, glory, euphoria, emotion, jeopardy, identity, the human spirit. There are plenty of areas in which other teams have better stories – Real Madrid’s Champions League win last season is the most recent example – but it’s hard to conceive that any football team will have a season as vivid, life-affirming and mind-altering as United in 1998-99. While United’s Treble felt like a miracle, City’s feels like an inevitability.

In some ways this is just splitting climaxes. A Treble is a Treble is a Treble. But City’s relentless excellence - and it would be a bit pathetic not to acknowledge how outrageously good they are - is one of the main reasons theirs would be different: a slow-release drug rather than an explosion of pharmaceutical-grade joy. It would still provide the warmest glow of superiority, like when AC Milan won the European Cup in 1989 by battering Real Madrid 5-0 in the semi-final and Steaua Bucharest 4-0 in the final. That kind of supremacy brooks not a solitary argument. It also brings a different kind of satisfaction: immensely rewarding, impossible to dispute on the field, but not quite as soul-stirring as doing it the hardest way. Ask any City fan whether they preferred the experience of winning the title on goal difference in 2011-12 or by 19 points six years later.

A feature of sport is that utter dominance is less rewarding than marginal superiority; the closer you are to defeat, the greater the thrill of victory. The James Bond films would be pretty crap if he didn’t make eye contact with the Grim Reaper. Tom Cruise’s career franchise isn’t called Mission: Increasingly Probable.

A City Treble has been on the cards since Abu Dhabi x Pep Guardiola was launched in 2016. If it doesn’t happen this season, it will soon enough. In 1999 it was 30 years since United had gone into March with a chance of doing the Treble; City have done so in five of the last six seasons.

We shouldn’t ignore the fact that United had a significant financial advantage in the 1990s, even if much of it came from a Megastore rather than a megastate. It certanly wasn’t as pronounced – or potentially illegal – as City’s. Nor was the extent of their dominance. On the face of it, they have similar records. The 1998-99 title was United’s fifth in seven years of the Premier League; City are about to make it five in six. But while the view from the top is similar, they climbed different mountains to get there.

Football, though not exactly a beacon of equality in the 1990s, was more democratic than it is now. And - spoiler alert! - that inequality is only going to grow, which makes it harder to recreate the environment in which United did the Treble. They won the title with 79 points, which is often mistakenly used in evidence against them. If anything, it reveals how often United had to go to the well. While they still administered a few spankings, few if any felt routine.

United’s last defeat in any competition was before Christmas, and they needed every single league point to hold off an Arsenal side that did not crack. Before the Champions League final, Ferguson told United that they shouldn’t be worried because Bayern Munich were not as good as Arsenal. Most United players of the time regard Arsene Wenger’s first bit of fusion cooking – British beef, French and Dutch seasoning – as the toughest domestic opponent they ever faced. City have had an equally worthy opponent in recent season, but not this year.

Arsenal weren’t United’s only concern. Gianluca Vialli’s Chelsea, who finished third, lost only three league games all season, which in those days was almost unprecedented for the champions, never mind the also-rans.

United put both Arsenal and Chelsea out of the FA Cup, as well as Liverpool, Newcastle, Middlesbrough and Kevin Keegan’s Fulham: that’s the teams that finished second, third, seventh, ninth and 13th in the Premier League plus the runaway third-tier champions, managed by somebody who became England manager three days later.

They also blew away Serie A’s aura by knocking out both Champions League entrants, Inter and Juventus, and ending an eight-year run in which an Italian side had been in the final. Before that they were drawn in the definitive group of death - United, Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Brondby - knowing that only one team was guaranteed to qualify³. This season, City also faced teams from Spain, Germany and Denmark, but Borussia Dortmund, Sevilla and FC Copenhagen don’t quite compare, even if Sevilla’s limitations make last month’s fiasco even more exasperating.

The quality of the opposition is the main reason United were involved in enough epic matches or moments to fill a decade. That includes the holiest of trinities:

• 14 April The FA Cup semi-final replay win over Arsenal, the greatest United game I’ve seen.

• 21 April The win over Juventus in the Champions League semi-final, the greatest United performance I’ve seen.

• 26 May The last three minutes in Barcelona, the greatest high I’ve experienced watching United.

There was also an almost identical comeback against Liverpool in the FA Cup; an eight-goal romp at Forest; a ferocious response to going behind to Spurs on the final day of the league season; a magnificent, primal 1-1 draw with the champions Arsenal in the league; and a white-knuckle 1-1 draw with Inter in the San Siro. In a sense nothing sums up United’s season better than the two demented 3-3 draws with Barcelona in the group stages. United came up with two great songs and tossed them off as B-sides.

United had to work for almost everything, particularly in the run-in. The Premier League and the Champions League went to the last second, and the only thing resembling an anti-climax – the routine FA Cup final win over Newcastle – was more than made up for by the real final against Arsenal at Villa Park.

The stats are mostly too dry to tell this story, because it's all about human experience, but there are some that show how good a view United had from the precipice. They came from behind to win or draw 17 games, including 11 in the second half of the season when the stakes were getting higher and higher. So far this season, City’s tally of comebacks is seven, three of them since football resumed after the World Cup. In that time City have trailed for only 190 minutes in 34 games, or six per cent of the time. They usually score the first goal, and then the second, and sometimes the third. In every sense, they are too good.

United’s players and supporters experienced the special euphoria of a late equaliser or winner on nine occasions (ten if you include Peter Schmeichel’s penalty save against Arsenal at Villa Park, and you jolly well should), culminating in three minutes of ecstasy in Barcelona. City have done it twice, at home to Fulham and in a group game against Dortmund.

Hugh McIlvanney’s words, written in the Sunday Times four days after the Champions League final, ring as true now as they did then. “With Manchester United, it is never over until the Fat Lady has a heart attack. Wherever the current representatives of Old Trafford stand in the all-time league table of great football teams, they yield to nobody as producers of drama.”

As with all the best dramas, United suffered a fair bit in acts one and two.  Eight months before Barcelona, Teddy Sheringham scored a last-minute equaliser for Bayern. They were pummelled twice, humiliated even, by Arsenal at the start of the season. Paul Ince’s late equaliser at Anfield in early May (act two went on forever, all the better to set up act three, which took only ten days) was a sickening moment of revenge that seemed to tip the title towards Arsenal. Barcelona, more specifically Rivaldo, came back repeatedly in those 3-3 draws, and United were battered at times against Inter and Juventus. To use one of Ferguson’s favourite phrases, there were plenty of moments when they had no choice but to take their medicine.

They could have done with an inhaler in the second half of the season, when there was barely time to breathe. From the January FA Cup tie against Liverpool onwards, United played 43 hours of football spread across 28 matches. During those 2580 minutes, they were almost always on the edge. Only 318 minutes (or 12 per cent) were spent with a cushion of more than one goal - and over a third of those minutes came in the fraught Champions League tie against Internazionale, when a two-goal lead felt anything but secure. All told, it was a ride like no other.

This isn’t tribal rationalising. Every team has their own glory and identity, and United have plenty of reason to covet some of their rivals’ triumphs. Take a peculiar detail of the Fergie years, that titles were rarely won in the grand manner. Six of the first nine Premier Leagues were confirmed when United weren’t even playing⁴ and the closest United got to a title-winning moment under Ferguson was probably Robin van Persie’s mighty volley against Villa in 2013. It was hardly an Aguero moment. I couldn’t even tell you who was commentating, never mind what they said. And it’s not just under Ferguson: United’s first ever league title in 1908 was officially confirmed by a miserable 1-0 defeat at home to Notts County.

City will always dine out on two death-defying title wins in 2012 and 2022, and understandably enjoy the moral superiority that comes with being managed by Pep Guardiola. They have changed English football in a way Ferguson’s United didn’t.

Liverpool celebrate spectacular comebacks, glorious European nights, being the underdog and even penalty shoot-outs. We might sneer about how many major trophies they’ve won on penalties (eight). But as we know from Moscow, few things make you feel so alive.

Arsenal fans of a certain age are extraordinarily blessed to have seen their team win the league away to their three biggest rivals: Spurs in 1971 and 2004, Liverpool in 1989 (with the original Aguero moment) and United in 2002. While United have won 20 titles to Arsenal’s 13, they haven’t come close to tasting those infusions of schadenfreude. These are the away grounds at which United have won the title: Villa Park, Upton Park, the Riverside, the Dell, the DW Stadium and Ewood Park. And while there were title-winning victories in nature if not name at Elland Road (1994), Anfield (1997) and the Etihad (2007), it’s not quite the same.

Arsenal also have their unbeaten season to flaunt, even if the lack of jeopardy in 2003-04 makes it in some ways a colder experience than their triumphant, Ljungbergkamp-inspired march to the Double two years earlier. Their fans celebrate Invincible Day every year when the last unbeaten record in the Premier League disappears.

United fans don’t really have an equivalent - Treble Day will always be 26 May - but in recent years there has been a growing fear that either City or Liverpool are going to do it.

It doesn’t matter. United’s Treble will always be sacred. It was the time of our lives, drenched in glory like nothing before or since. And it wasn’t just about the achievement; it was about the experience.

1. For a few reasons, primarily Covid, Fergie being long gone and the title race being over by November, Liverpool’s eventual title triumph was about as painless as could be for a United supporter.

2. The Treble has since been normalised, with five other examples in Europe’s main leagues: Barcelona (2008-09, 2014-15), Internazionale (2009-10) and Bayern Munich (2012-13, 2019-20).

3. In the end United went through, along with the winners Bayern, as one of two best second-placed teams.

4. Nick Henry, Julian Darby, Dean Holdsworth, Hamilton Ricard, Mark Viduka and Gilberto Silva are on a different list of players who scored for United without ever wearing a red shirt: they all scored goals that clinched the title.