United were 11-10 favourites with Ladbrokes, with Bayern 15-8. Those odds owed as much to giddiness and goodwill than a dispassionate appraisal of the merits of each team. The match was played on what would have been Sir Matt Busby’s 90th birthday, and there was a pervasive sense of destiny in the pre-match coverage.
The match was the last of United’s 11-day trilogy. On 16 May, they beat Spurs 2-1 at Old Trafford to win the Premier League title, pipping an utterly magnificent Arsenal team by a point. On 22 May, four days before Barcelona, they beat Newcastle 2-0 in the FA Cup final. The disparity between the sides was such it felt like a pre-European Cup final friendly. When the United centre-back David May went in at half-time, with his team leading 1-0, he said to Scholes: “I am not even tired. I can’t believe this is a cup final.”
United’s win completed their third Double in six seasons. They had celebrated with gusto a week earlier after regaining the title; this time the party was low-key – mainly because they were so close to Barcelona, perhaps also because the win had been so undemanding. On the Sunday they went to Bisham Abbey, the England training complex, to begin preparations. That evening they practised penalties after training before watching a 40-minute video highlighting the most important points from the two group games against Bayern.
The next day they flew by Concorde to the peaceful seaside resort of Sitges. Ferguson always placed huge importance on preparation for a cup final. He was ridiculed by some when, in his most recent autobiography, he said one of the main reasons United lost the 2009 Champions League final defeat to Barcelona was because they picked a poor hotel. Yet 18 years earlier, when they beat Barcelona 2-1 in the Cup Winners’ Cup final, he said the quality of their Rotterdam hotel was a major factor in their victory.
On the Monday night, the group who would later become known as the Class of 92 sat on the hotel balcony discussing the historical significance of what would happen in 48 hours’ time. Giggs was the eldest at 25, Phil Neville the youngest at 22. It wasn’t even four years since they were told kids couldn’t win anything; now they had the chance to win everything.
May and Teddy Sheringham, who shared a room, were like detectives trying to spot clues as to the XI for the final – and, specifically, whether they would start. Both thought they had a good chance; both were wrong. The announcement of the XI was the first of three team talks given by Ferguson and his assistant Steve McClaren in the two days before the game. The second focused on Bayern’s tactics, which Ferguson felt were to score and then shut the game down, and the third covered set-pieces for and against.
The absence of Keane and Scholes left Ferguson with a giant hole in the centre of the pitch. Nicky Butt, who had gone from substitute to MVP, was not even allowed a place on the subs’ bench for the FA Cup final. Most assumed Butt’s midfield partner would be Ronny Johnsen, the Norwegian centre-back, who had played there in the second leg of the quarter-final against Internazionale. Giggs and Beckham were the other main contenders, with Phil Neville an outside option. If Johnsen played, May would come into the defence.
Ferguson had already decided that he could not go into the game without some penetration from central midfield. Usually that came from the passing of Keane and Scholes, and the late runs of the latter. With both unavailable, Ferguson’s first instinct was to use Giggs in the centre. At that stage of his career he had played only a handful of games in that position – but he was usually impressive, and his dribbling was even more devastating when he started from a central position. Ferguson wanted Giggs to attack Lothar Matthaus, Bayern’s 38-year-old sweeper, who had been harassed into mistakes for both of United’s goals in the group game in Munich.
A tackle from Gary Speed changed everything. It put Keane out of the FA Cup final in the first few minutes, forcing a United reshuffle. Beckham moved into the centre of midfield, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer went to the right wing and Sheringham came on up front. Beckham played with such class and authority, controlling the match with his short and long passing, that Ferguson changed his plans. He considered the size of the Nou Camp pitch and the quality of Stefan Effenberg’s passing in Bayern’s midfield, and decided he wanted an equivalent to “control the passing momentum”.
Ferguson knew Bayern were worried about United’s width – they lobbied successfully to have the pitch made narrower, to the exact specifications of their own pitch in Munich – and wanted two genuine wingers. Jesper Blomqvist had never really played on the right, whereas Giggs had done so on a few occasions that season – most notably when United hammered Brondby 6-2. Giggs said he was “comfortable” playing on the right, though he has more recently spoken of his irritation at not being picked in the centre of midfield.
The team that Ferguson picked was a bespoke solution to a bespoke problem. Indeed, in his first three Champions League finals at United, he picked an XI that had never played together before, and would never do so again.
Manchester United (4-4-2): Schmeichel; G Neville, Stam, Johnsen, Irwin; Giggs, Beckham, Butt, Blomqvist; Yorke, Cole.
Bayern announced their team two days before the match, with the coach Ottmar Hitzfeld happily telling everyone that Markus Babbel had been picked at right-wing-back because of the threat of Giggs. As it turned out, he was up against Blomqvist.
Bayern Munich (1-4-2-3): Kahn; Matthaus; Babbel, Linke, Kuffour, Tarnat; Effenberg, Jeremies; Basler, Jancker, Zickler.
In the final they went behind after six minutes. The game hadn’t settled down when Beckham miscontrolled a difficult ball in midfield and Bayern counter-attacked. Carsten Jancker was challenged clumsily on the edge of the area by Johnsen, and Mario Basler stroked a simple free-kick into the bottom corner. It was the second time Schmeichel had conceded a free-kick at that end of the Nou Camp in the Champions League that season; the first was from Rivaldo in the group game against Barcelona. Each time, the ITV commentator Clive Tyldesley said the free-kicks were deflected. But neither were. On both occasions, Schmeichel wrongfooted himself by taking a presumptuous step in the wrong direction. Basler’s free-kick, which was relatively tame, went straight into the corner. Schmeichel complained that he couldn’t see it because of the jockeying of Basler, Butt, Jancker and Stam on the edge of the wall. “I think,” said Cole in his autobiography, “that p****d off a lot of the chaps.”
The match situation was not unusual to United, but the gravity of it was. They had never been behind in a game of such importance and for most of the match they laboured for an equaliser, never approaching their best.
There were a few reasons for that. One was fatigue – half the team were carrying injuries, and the match was United’s 63rd of the season. They were without Keane, whose radiant mental strength and relentless, progressive passing sparked their famous comeback against
Juventus in the semi-finals. There was also a bit of stage fright. “We were too inhibited,” said Giggs in his autobiography. “I hate to say it, but the occasion got to us a bit.” He wasn’t the only one who felt that way. “We never turned up for the final,” said Cole in the Manchester Evening News. “I was very disappointed with my performance. It’s one of my few regrets in football that I didn’t do the business in the biggest game I started.”
Blomqvist felt his own legs “weren’t responding as normal … they were like jelly.” Apart from a 90-second spell early in the second half, United did not threaten to overwhelm Bayern until right at the end of the match. And though Bayern never had any sustained pressure of their own, they did create the clearer chances on the break. Even Ferguson, who will argue until his dying day that United were the better team because their intent was so much greater, accepted they created almost nothing. “I honestly can’t think of anything exciting or significant,” he said in The Unique Treble, “until those last three incredible minutes.”
It’s not that United were battered by Bayern. They weren’t even outplayed. They had more possession, more corners and more shots on target. But their touches were slightly heavy, their decision making slightly awry and their tempo well below the usual quick-quick-quicker approach. Tyldesley summarised it neatly when he said, late in the first half, that United were “creating openings rather than chances”.
Aside from Beckham, who overshadowed Effenberg in midfield with and without the ball, United’s attack struggled. Giggs provided plenty of electricity but most of the things he tried didn’t quite come off. Blomqvist had the kind of anonymous game he feared, while Yorke – who in the 1998-99 season was the best forward in European football along with Andriy Shevchenko – was the biggest disappointment of the lot. Ferguson thought he had never seen him look so nervous on a football field. Or, presumably, off it.
The redeployment of Giggs and Beckham, and Blomqvist’s struggles, meant there were no crosses of any quality. “We were plunged,” said Ferguson in Managing My Life, “into the nightmare of chasing the game against opponents who could emphasise their strengths and hide their limitations by applying a policy of unambitious containment.”
It may have been unambitious, but it was also accomplished. There was a resilience and authority to Bayern’s defending that was not always evident at the other end, where Johnsen and Schmeichel were very jittery for the first half hour. United were grateful for the majestic Stam, who was a nose ahead of Beckham as their outstanding performer. The best player on the pitch was the youngest, the 22-year-old Ghanaian Samuel Kuffour. He and his fellow marker Thomas Linke nagged United’s forwards incessantly, while Jens Jeremies did the same in midfield. Matthaus, who started as a sweeper, was asked by Hitzfeld to move up into midfield where possible so that Jeremies could push up closer to Beckham. It meant that Bayern flitted between two formations, 1-4-2-3 and a 4-1-2-3.
After Basler’s goal neither side created a clear chance in a scruffy first half, though Bayern had the better half-chances and deserved to lead. Zickler shot wide from Basler’s cross and headed a bouncing ball too close to Schmeichel from 12 yards. The closest United came was when a long throw from Neville almost fell for Cole on the six-yard line. He was about to shoot when Linke’s desperate tackle diverted the ball off him and just wide.
During half-time, Ferguson told Stam to win the ball back quicker and more aggressively, and for the players to pass the ball quicker and more aggressively. He then gave a short speech inspired by the Scottish striker Steve Archibald. He had played under Ferguson at Aberdeen, when they had an affectionate but tempestuous relationship, and later played for Barcelona under Terry Venables. Archibald still lived in the city and came to see United train the night before the game. He told Ferguson that one of his abiding memories of the 1986 final, when Barcelona lost to Steaua Bucharest on penalties, was that at the end he had to walk right past the European Cup knowing he could not touch it.
Ferguson liked the story but only wanted to accentuate the positive to his players before the game. At half-time, however, things were getting desperate. “If you lose you will be six feet away from the European Cup, but you won’t be able to touch it, of course,” he said. “And I want you to think about that fact that you’ll have been so close to it and for many of you it will be the closest you’ll ever get. And you will hate that thought for the rest of your lives. So just make sure you don’t lose. Don’t you dare come back in here without giving your all.”
Ferguson spoke to Sheringham at length during the break, telling him that he would come on after 20 minutes of the second half if it was still 1-0. “That p****d me off,” said Solskjaer in an interview with FourFourTwo in 2016. “I thought, ‘I’ve scored 17 goals for you this season, mostly coming on as sub – aren’t you going to speak to me?’”
Sheringham secretly hoped United wouldn’t score so that he’d have the chance to play in a European Cup final. He had little to worry about. The match drifted along with little goalmouth incident, although the buzzing atmosphere made the game feel more exciting than it was. Blomqvist missed United’s first good chance in the 56th minute, scooping over the bar from six yards after stretching to beat Babbel to a speculative cross from the right by Giggs. Ferguson gave Sheringham the call to replace Blomqvist after 65 minutes and spent a couple of minutes talking to him on the touchline. “Come on,” said an impatient Sheringham. “Get me on now.”
Sheringham’s introduction meant a change of shape for United, whose freestyle formation was closest to a diamond midfield – Butt deepest, Giggs on the left and Beckham right, with Yorke behind the front two and Sheringham also pulling left. It left them dangerously exposed to counter-attacks, but Ferguson was always of the view that you may as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. “We could never have started with that line-up; it would have been brave going on suicidal,” said Gary Neville in his autobiography, Red. “A final twenty minutes of desperation was another matter.”
Bayern responded to United’s substitution by bringing on Mehmet Scholl for Zickler. It was a clever move which allowed Scholl, a defter, smarter player, to exploit the enormous space in front of the United defence. “We were living on the edge and we knew it,” said Cole. “Time, and patience, were running out in equal measure.”
Patience was running out in more ways than one. A number of United players, especially Sheringham and Stam, were irked by what they saw as showmanship from Bayern, and one player in particular. “When Basler took Bayern’s corners he was an absolute disgrace,” said Stam in his autobiography, Head to Head. “He was posing and milking the applause, believing he was the man of the moment, having scored what he thought was the winning goal.”
Bayern might have scored four times between the 73rd and 84th minute. They created a series of opportunities on the counter-attack, mostly after intercepting weary passes from United players. Schmeichel made good saves from Effenberg and Scholl, who also hit the post with a gorgeous disguised chip from the edge of the box. That came after a swaggering run from deep inside his own half by Basler, who twisted Johnsen inside out on the edge of the area without touching the ball before then giving it to Scholl. As the ball sailed over Schmeichel’s head, his heart sank, because he knew it was in and it was over. Instead it drifted just enough to hit the post and bounce straight back to Schmeichel.
Five minutes later, Jancker hit the bar with an overhead kick from close range. By then Bayern had substituted Matthaus, who had almost nothing left. “After 75 minutes I told the coach I was feeling tired,” he said in FourFourTwo. “I’d been making different runs in midfield than when I’d played sweeper, where I didn’t have to run as much. I didn’t tell the coach that he had to take me off – only that I was tired and if he did want to substitute me, I would agree.”
Most of the United players’ legs were going, too, but they were given a bit of impetus by the arrival of Solskjaer in the 81st minute. His reputation as a deadly substitute had been established that season, especially with the injury-time winner in the FA Cup against Liverpool and an absurd four goals in 11 minutes at Nottingham Forest. His irritation that Ferguson had not spoken to him at the break was still in his mind, but so was another half-time team talk 11 days earlier. United were drawing 1-1 in their final league game at home to Spurs, a match they needed to win to regain the title. “Don’t worry lads, keep playing like you are and you’ll get your goal,” said Ferguson. “And if we haven’t scored with 15 minutes to go I’ll just put Ole on.”
Solskjaer wasn’t needed, as Cole scored the winner early in the second half, but his confidence went through the roof and stayed there, even when he was p****d off.
When Solskjaer came on in Barcelona, he attacked the game like a man who’d had a premonition it was going to be his night. His first touch, 22 seconds after coming on, was a good header that forced a decent flying save from Oliver Kahn – the first serious save he’d had to make in the match.
Into Added Time 