"Football... bloody hell" said Alex Ferguson after the European Cup Final win in 1999, completing the legendary treble for United and gaining himself a knighthood. Never were truer words spoken. Just over a week ago, the team put every fan through the grinder by leaving it until the last day of the season to clinch the victory needed to win the Premier League again, leaving a plucky Chelsea as runners-up. Now the question was... could we do it to them again in the Champions League Final in Moscow?Well, yes we could... and did! But not without making every fan sweat with anxiety like Chris Langham outside school gates. With both teams able to field arguably their strongest team selection of the season this was always going to go the distance and be a war of nerves and attrition. Chelsea were in their first ever Champions League final and were looking for revenge for being pipped to the league title. They'd had a bad start to the season with "the special one" leaving and being replaced by Avram Grant, a man with a face that looks like a Marvel supervillain. By plugging away though by the end of the season they were neck and neck with us - however we are past masters of the end of season run in, and we also had the goal machine that was Ronaldo to make our goal difference a major factor. In the end they bottled it on the last day and we won comfortably. Ish.
So to the final. 50 years on from the Munich disaster, 40 years on from our '68 European Cup Victory, Ryan Giggs looking to beat Charlton's appearance record, Ronaldo looking for that 42nd goal of the season. It had to be didn't it?
20 minutes and United had most of the possession but hadn't managed to do anything much with it. Hargreaves was running Ashley Cole ragged on the right, the midfield were bossing Chelsea around but it took time to make that decisive first strike. Then Ronaldo managed to make Essien look very ordinary and shrugged him off to get that header. One nil.
The rest of the first half was all United. It was a question of how many could we score with Tevez missing a sitter. However evil forces were at work and intervened just before half time, as Lampard managed to get an equalizer from a couple of unfortunate deflections on our part. So the jammy bastards manged to go in at half time undeservedly level.
Dunno what Grant said to the Chelsea team at half time but they came back a different team. The reds never really got any possession in the second half and were damn lucky to hold on to a 1-1, as they had a couple of shots off the post and crossbar. Rooney disappeared, Tevez wasn't really getting any joy and Ronaldo was a shadow of the Player Of The Year we'd seen most of the season. Scholes & Carrick were being forced further back and Vidic and Ferdinand were kept very busy by the blues.
Extra time it was, and again United struggled as the rain began to pour down. Giggs though almost managed a goal after coming on as a sub, which was kept from going in by a typical John Terry "where the fuck did he come from?" defensive header away. From this point on we managed to get a grip back on the match and there was belief we could do it.
Throughout the match Chelsea players had been surrounding the ref jostling and arguing every decision that they felt was against them. Following a stop in the game due to injury, Tevez kicked the ball out of play in the Chelsea half instead of passing back to Chelsea, because this was the same tactic that Chelsea pulled earlier in the game when they should have passed the ball back to United players in their half. Gentleman's agreement and all that. They didn't like this and Drogba got unnecessarily involved and gave Vidic a girlie slap in the face in the line of the referee's sight. To be honest it was lucky that the ref sent Drogba off as I'd hate to see what he'd look like if Vidic had managed to get at him. Duing all this melee brave John Terry managed to give Tevez some verbals and spat at him but got away with this. So, down to ten men and a bit rattled, Chelsea seemed glad to see out extra time for a penalty shoot out.
I'm not a fan of these. Following England for years you sort of get used to them, but never like them. It's not a great way to decide a match. Great drama for a neutral but not for a fan of either team involved.
Tevez scores for United. Ballack scores for Chelsea. Carrick confidently scores for the reds. Belletti scores for Chelsea.
The player you'd expect to score a penalty then... doesn't. Ronaldo did his trademark start stop start run up and Cech guessed the right way (to be fair you could see it coming a mile off). Was Ronaldo going to go down as the person who stopped United from winning the cup? Well, no...
Lampard scores for Chelsea. Hargreaves scores a belter for us. Wife cheating Ashley Cole (poor Cheryl) scores for Chelsea, and Nani scores for Man United.
Now, history always tells us there's got to big a victim in these proceedings, a person who will become for lazy comedy slags and sport commentators everywhere shorthand for fucking up bigstyle, and tonight ladies and gentlemen, we've chosen a very special person for the job. No Ronaldo, not you, stop blubbing and sit down. Somebody else... Drogba's sending off meant that he wouldn't be the fifth person to stand up and take a penalty. So who could take that job? Who had the nerve to replace him as the person who'd take the fifth penalty and therefore in theory the glory of being the one who'd win them the cup? Well, before the shoot out the lists were drawn up and a Mr John Terry said he'd be up to the job.
"The pitch is the same for both sides and if we get the footwear right we will be fine. We are not worrying about that at all" - John Terry speaking before the match. Well, at match point for the biggest Club trophy of all, JT tries to be clever, slips whilst kicking the ball in the rain and misses.
Equilibrium restored, and I, like Terry, manage to just about pick myself off the floor.
Sudden death. Anderson scores for Man United. Kalou... scores for Chelsea. Giggsy's next. Do you think on a night like this he's going to miss. Nope. Record's already been set, penalty scored, pressure back on Chelsea.
But what's this coming over the hill, is it Anelka? Is it Anelka? Errr, yes. The well travelled one is here to keep his latest team in the cup. Being ex-Liverpool, Arsenal, City and now at Chelsea is enough to make him a legendarily unpopular at Old Trafford, but not anymore. We like him now. All because Edwin Van Der Sar guesses the right way and Nicolas Anelka's attempt is saved.
And that's it.
We've won the European Cup.
Again.
It really doesn't fully sink in until I see Michael Ballack crying. Always reassuring to see a German in tears, ala 1999. But this was different from the treble year. Back then we thought we'd lost it, and there was no way back but the comeback happened so fast the win was almost orgasmic. Moscow had been like Russian Roulette, however, with Chelsea playing the Christopher Walken role. John Terry mopes about in tears in the rain, visibly looking like he's aged twenty years in 5 minutes, with the weight of the knowledge that if he'd had scored he'd have a European Cup Winner's medal. But as United's Rio Ferdinand can proudly boast to his England team mate in future, "the winner's medal is much like a Chocolate Orange. It's not Terry's, it's mine".
