Sir Alex Ferguson’s United crashed out after a 2-1 defeat in Basel.
United found themselves ultimately ruing the defensive errors that have cost them a chance of winning this season’s European crown. Though their goalscoring in the group was hardly spectacular, a draw in Benfica, and three and two goal hauls at home to both the Portuguese and Swiss teams is nothing to be ashamed of. And against a team of Basle’s standing, even if only able to score once away from home, you’d expect a second goal.
But last night against Basle, the Swiss team found themselves unexpectedly ahead early on, and so they clung on to what they had, rather than play the expansive football they did at Old Trafford. United’s lesson here was that they cannot cede the advantage to an opponent so easily. Ultimately, it was defensive errors to blame and that is why they will be playing Thursday night football in two months’ time.
For City, their exit was predictable, though their fans had brief cause for optimism as they went 1-0 up at home to a Bayern Munich side clearly with minds elsewhere, and shorn of all of its top players. Bayern were doing an Arsenal, but in north east Spain, Napoli were doing a Marseille, and no sooner had City had their hopes raised had Goklan Inler fired home. Hamsik’s second consigned City to Europa League football – what they deserved for listless and tactically inept displays in Europe against a quite clearly superior Napoli side.
It was a remarkable week in Europe in all, with the likes of APOEL, Marseille, Lyon and Basle laughing in the face of those who say the first group stage is predictable. Maybe if you are Barcelona or Real Madrid this is true, but for the rest of Europe, the battle for qualification was never more fierce.
Michel Platini’s decision to give more places in the competition to smaller countries, the critics said, would weaken the cup, make it more predictable. Not so. What is has done, is spread the wealth around further, giving smaller teams the chance to make it into the Champions League. The likes of Otelul Galati and Victoria Plzen are testament to Platini’s foresight.
French teams too, have ensured late drama. Marseille completed a quite stunning turnaround, coming from 2-0 down in the Westfalion in Dortmund to win 3-2, an incredible last minute strike from Mathieu Valbuena taking them through. Whilst Lyon found themselves with a seven goal deficit to Ajax as well as being three points behind the Dutch team. With Real winning 3-0 in Amsterdam, Lyon went 1-0 down before equalising on the stroke of half time. A quite incredible second half in which they scored six goals must rank as one of the great European recoveries – up there with Liverpool’s quite incredible escape in Istanbul in 2005 when they beat AC Milan.
For once, UEFA are right when their media people say this has been a memorable group stage – it really has, unless of course, you come from Manchester.
