Whether it was fatigue, nerves, Solskjaer’s introduction, the removal of Matthaus or a combination of all four, the match underwent a character change in the 87th minute. Bayern, who had kept United at arm’s length with almost disdainful ease for most of the game, suddenly fell off a cliff. United created four opportunities in barely 90 seconds. Sheringham’s shot was saved by Kahn after a backheel from Solskjaer; Yorke headed Beckham’s cross too far in front of Sheringham and then missed an excellent chance, miskicking desperately after a low cross from Gary Neville. Finally Kahn danced across his line to make another comfortable save from Solskjaer’s header.
On the bench, Keane turned to the reserve team coach Jimmy Ryan. “They’ve gone,” he said. “We’ve got them.” In his autobiography, Keane elaborated on that observation. “For a team with their reputation Bayern were by now a shambles, as bad as bad can be: they were actually ‘bottling’ it big time.”
A United goal was palpably in the post, but there were only a few minutes for it to arrive. The German television commentator Marcel Reif wasn’t alone in thinking they’d left it too late. “Maybe I shouldn’t say this, and I promise never to say it again, ever,” he began. “Football, as Gary Lineker once said, is a simple game; 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans win.”
Beckham’s impatient foul on Effenberg in the 89th minute allowed Bayern to waste more seconds by replacing Basler with Hasan Salihamidzic. “Basler and Matthaus left the pitch as though they had just collected Oscars,” sniffed Stam, who like approximately 100.00 per cent of Dutch footballers did not hold their German counterparts in the highest regard. “After watching those tossers proclaim themselves as winners I was even more determined to find that extra bit of energy in my cramping legs. I wanted to beat them move than any other opponent I’d faced.”
Beckham remembers looking to the touchline during that break in play and seeing the European Cup trophy with Bayern ribbons attached to it. Ferguson had made peace with the result and was thinking about what he would say to the press. “I was already composing myself,” he said, “to take defeat with dignity.”
The press had already had their say about him. Most panned him for taking one gamble too many on the biggest night of his life by moving Giggs and Beckham from their natural positions. The story goes that Ferguson later amused himself by getting copies of all the match reports that never saw the light of day because they were desperately rewritten at the end of the game. The view that Ferguson messed up tactically is a little simplistic. There were plenty of times in his career when he tinkered too much but on this occasion he was placed in an invidious position by the absence of Keane and Scholes. “It is fair to say the team shape didn’t work great, but I don’t think the manager could have done much different,” said Neville. “It was just a tired performance by us… As a team we had been sprinting so hard for so long.”
Though Beckham’s crossing was missed, he was easily United’s best attacking player among the starting XI. “I didn’t need a European Cup final to prove to myself that I could play centre midfield at the highest level,” he said, “but it was still great to do it.” He would end the year as runner-up to Rivaldo in both the Ballon d’Or and the FIFA World Player of the Year.
There wasn’t such consensus over Giggs’s performance. He was a threat, if an erratic one, and Ferguson heard the left-back Tarnat call for help on a number of occasions. Ferguson argues the strain of repelling Giggs contributed significantly to the fatigue which suddenly overwhelmed Bayern at the end of the match. Giggs doesn’t necessarily agree. “I did as he asked,” said Giggs in the Daily Mail earlier this year. “I kept going at Tarnat but kept losing the ball. To be honest, I was s**t that night.”
Then the electric board went up. On it was a ‘3’. Fergie time had come. Can Manchester United score? They always score.
To be continued.
Into Added Time 