A night to remember; The night and day Man Utd stopped Messi and Barcelona

The UEFA clash between Manchester United and rivals Barcelona is seen by many as the clash of the season from two different rival countries.

It is also seen by many as the end of the road for United because of lacking a good defender to stop the likes of Messi, Suarez and their company, but there is a time the English side stopped the club and repeat could be possible.

Julio Cesar could not have drawn a finer quarter-final tie than Manchester United versus Barcelona. ‘Occasion’ is more appropriate for two institutions that have given their followers some of the most evocative nights of their lives.

Bryan Robson may regard 1991 as his zenith but for the United supporters who carried him off the Old Trafford turf in 1984, it was his Herculean quarter-final display. A mural of Robson being hoisted heroically that evening was chiselled onto a wall in J Stand at the start of last season. To a generation of United supporters, mention ‘Barcelona’ in a game of word association and ‘Robson’ and ‘Rotterdam’ are the replies.

Wes Brown has a compelling case to rival Robson’s as the greatest individual United performance against Barca. The 2008 Champions League semi-final was scripted by Paul Scholes’ sliced strike and the promise of a starting role in the Moscow final nine years after he was suspended in Barcelona. It was not Scholes’ greatest performance in red. It was for Brown, though.

Ferguson singled out Brown at his post-match press conference and always maintained, in a golden era for English centre-halves, Brown was the ‘best natural defender’. The irony is Brown’s standout season at United came at right-back on 2007-08. Gary Speed’s heavy tackle on Gary Neville restricted him to one substitute appearance in 18 months and Brown filled the void.

He had also irked his manager by stalling on a new contract as he approached his final months. “I’m nae talking about Wes Brown,” Ferguson snapped at one press conference opener. Brown committed nine days before the game of his life.

Brown was always going to start against Barca but Nemanja Vidic was still injured. Gerard Pique had recently drawn praise from Ferguson as a substitute at Middlesbrough and lined up in Vidic’s absence against Roma in the quarter-final second leg. The versatile John O’Shea was a more unconvincing but experienced option. Pique, on the bench for the first leg in Camp Nou, failed to make the cut for the second. Brown got the nod at centre half.

“That season was one of my best in that I didn’t pick up any injuries,” Brown tells the MEN. “I had a good season. I played most of the games and then obviously in the semi-final Vida was injured and I had to go centre-back. Which was fine with me, to me there was no complication about that whatsoever.”

David Pleat, on co-commentary for ITV, quipped: “They’re still weaving patterns and they’re pretty patterns, but they’re not getting near Edwin van der Sar in the Manchester United goal.” In the 88th minute, Carles Puyol appeared to have breached United but his cross was cleared by Brown, stretching every sinew in a body that could be brittle. “He’s big, he’s bad” did not air until the next year.

Ferguson’s assistant Carlos Queiroz was so meticulous in his preparation he laid out mats on United’s Carrington training pitch to signal the no-go areas. Lionel Messi, 21 at the time, operated on the right to accommodate Samuel Eto’o and that meant Brown, as the left-sided centre-back, had to approach him whenever he danced past Patrice Evra. Brown feigns ignorance about Queiroz’s planning and is modest about Ferguson’s post-match paean.

“It was simple, we all had jobs to do,” Brown explains. “It was simple things: Whoever was closest to Messi, get to him as early as possible, don’t give him a lot of time. And most of the time that was me, just the fact I was playing that left-hand side and he was coming in from the right.

“I have watched that game back and they have some good chances as well but so do we. At the time, Scholesy put a fantastic one away, semi-final, to score a goal like that was unbelievable. But we had some more chances. Like it would do when you’re 1-0 up, it gets a bit iffy near the end and we were holding out the last five or 10 minutes but the gameplan was fantastic. That one we definitely deserved to go through.”

With the exception of Cristiano Ronaldo’s wayward third-minute penalty in the first leg, United seldom committed over the halfway line in a goalless draw that set the tone for their successful second leg, the difference being Scholes converted his early opportunity. Grit reigned over guile and the Barcelona coach Frank Rijkaard, already resigned to a summer exit, lamented the approach.

“I just feel it is a great pity it is not the most beautiful kind of football to watch.” This came three years after Jorge Valdano dubbed Liverpool’s and Chelsea’s scrappy semi-final as ‘s**t on a stick’ football. Three English sides had reached the last four for the second year running. Ferguson, an underachiever in Europe, had suffered a third semi-final ejection by conceding five to AC Milan in 2007. He may not have mastered the continental balance in 2008 without Queiroz.

“Tough game away,” Brown recalls on a visit to his old school Burnage Academy for Boys to support a coaching session delivered by Quinton Fortune and the Quinton Fortune Football Academy. “Ronaldo missed a penalty in the first five minutes. It was really difficult. You can’t hear when you’re at the Nou Camp, believe me. It doesn’t matter, five or 10 yards apart, I’m shouting ‘Rio, Rio’, whoever, you cannot hear. Everything has to be in tact and everyone has to know what everyone’s doing and that squad we had then was fantastic.

“People ask me who was the better squad and I have to say ’99 because we did The Treble, it takes a lot to be able to do that. We had the squad then to do it that year [2007-08] and I think it was the Portsmouth [FA Cup] game where we played so well but just couldn’t put the ball in the net. Sometimes that happens, that’s the difference.

“Whereas in the ’99 season, we got a bit of luck and everything went for us.”

That 2008 squad was probably the best Ferguson ever had; that perfect blend of homegrown products and world-class additions. Scholes, Ryan Giggs and Brown were the only survivors from Barcelona in ’99 but their connection was key. Brown teed up Ronaldo in the final and Giggs slotted in the decisive spot-kick. That was the last great United side.

“We’re still friends now,” Brown says. “We all still speak and that’s the sort of vibe you need in a football club to win stuff, it’s not just the ability of people and players, it’s everything combined and that’s what made us a great team.”

They rose to the occasion.


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