Some Manchester United fans saw a wonderful game in Seville, it just wasn’t the one their team played in. A handful of supporters made the most of their team’s Champions League match, traveling to Spain early, and on Sunday they were at the Benito Villamarín with 50,000 others to see Real Betis lose 5-3 to Real Madrid. Three days later and three-and-a-half kilometers away they were among the 40,000 who watched United draw 0-0 at the Sánchez Pizjuán, on a night when their team had one shot on target.
There is something about Betis. Sunday was the second time they had been involved in a 5-3. There have also been two 5-0s, a 4-0, two 2-2s, two 3-2s, a 6-3 and a 4-4. Oh, and a victory at the Bernabéu. There have been no 0-0s. When it comes to Spanish football, there is a basic rule worth adhering to, whoever you support, always watch Betis. It is not one many would apply to United, because if what happened on Sunday was predictable, Wednesday evening probably was too.
It was not a great game. An hour or so after the final whistle a former player stood a few hundred meters from the Pizjuán. “Bloody hell,” he said, “that was awful, wasn’t it?” His was not a lone voice and this did not happen entirely by accident. In part, it happened by design too.
Barney Ronay wrote on these pages how “grudgingly, belatedly, and against the manager’s better judgment … Mourinho found himself forced by circumstance and bad luck into playing his most talented midfielder in his favorite position.” Only he didn’t, not exactly. “Paul made a big effort to try to give me what I asked,” Mourinho said. “Paul replaced Ander [Herrera] and tried to give the game the same qualities.” Even leaving aside the slightly baffling stand-off that appears to be developing between the two, it was a significant line.
As Pogba prepared to come on, Mourinho explained the plan. Standing there together, the manager pointing to a tactical diagram, the memes were inevitable, and most of them involved a stationary vehicle. It was Mourinho who introduced the concept of parking the bus to England when he complained about Tottenham doing it, but he is the one most often accused of being behind the wheel.
After this game, he said he felt “relieved” only once. There was no mention of any moments in which he felt excited. The nearest he got was to say: “We finished the game with more space … more close to the possibility of scoring a goal.”
There is a second leg to come, and United probably feel they are still favorites. Mourinho is entitled to set up his side any way he likes, entitled too to have little patience with the critics who clearly occupy his thoughts, and this may well have been the way he wanted it. Yet, asked what he made of the result, he said: “It’s not good, it’s not bad.”
Had it not been for David de Gea it could certainly have been bad. Mourinho insisted there was only one moment when he was concerned and dismissed the 26-5 tally as “statistical shots”. But Juan Mata admitted: “Almost all game we suffered quite a bit.”
The question being asked, and by many, is whether United should have done more. It is absurd to suggest it was going to be easy at a ground where Sevilla have lost once in more than a year. But United were clear favorites, with a budget more than four times the size of Sevilla’s.
El País described United as “one of world football’s giants, clearly diminished by their manager”. The Spanish daily concluded: “Greatness has to be demonstrated with football.”
Mourinho must play the way he believes is right to get results: that is his task. It is no one else’s; they can speak freely “from their sofas”, as he has put it, without the pressure and demands he carries. Nor should United necessarily be obliged by what Liverpool, City and Spurs do, although the contrast may be cruel.
If United win the second leg – and they probably will – this plan may be justified but the response to this match has suggested another layer to the analysis. Disappointment, disengagement, boredom. This is not about the identity of their opponents, it is about their own identity. Is this what United are and what they should be?
“Man United should be doing a lot better,” Ian Wright, the former Arsenal and England striker, told the BBC. “I’m baffled as to why they are playing in this sterile way. If I am a United fan I am disgusted at this performance.” He suggested this was not the “United Way”. And there is a debate to be had, one applicable to all. This is not about Mourinho, even if his team have raised these questions.
Are teams obliged to do something more than win? Should managers face demands about style, as well as results? Is that fair? Do fans care? Does it matter what the neutrals say? And perhaps the biggest question of all: what’s the point of it all?
No one remembers who comes second, they say. But try telling that to anyone who watched Brazil at the 1982 World Cup. There are winners who are forgotten too, though they may be fewer. It may not be fair to demand something more, beyond a team’s primary function, which is to win, and making this somehow an ethical question is a stretch, but there is something else, not just the score, not just success.
The former Sevilla manager Unai Emery is under no illusions that he has to win and that is what truly matters but it is not the only thing that matters. “The process of living it is as interesting as the way it ends,” he has said.
Across the city the Betis manager, Quique Setién, is committed to that idea. He too is criticized, as attacking coaches often are, for their defensive weaknesses, and results will sentence him one day. But they will remember him and his team. That handful of United fans who saw a wonderful game in Seville certainly will.
The Guardian Sport
