On the bench, player-manager Sir Alex Ferguson is relaxed, happy to be reunited with some of his favourite players, and thoroughly amused by his fellow managers’ rants, implosions and general muppetry in the competition so far. Respected and revered throughout football, his mere presence drives my team: all of them are desperate to impress the great man. This is the managerial equivalent of Messi playing in the Blue Square North.
In the opposing dug out a star-struck KM , with 27,000 posts on Redcafe as his sole footballing credentials, is out of his depth. His players are not taking him seriously (asking for autographs before the game probably didn’t help) and his tactical instructions were laughed at; they’re all treating this as a glorified friendly. But there is some solace as he gets to share a bottle of wine with Sir Alex after the match.
Like all of Fergie’s great teams, the team is built on rock solid centrebacks, powerful midfielders, explosive wingers and a cracking centreforward. A 4-2-3-1, I expect the football to be something like
this, except much better.
For midfield-starved caftards, here’s a midfield to salivate over. Forget your ‘deep lying playmakers’ and ‘DMs’, Sammer and Matthaus are proper box-to-box midfielders that can do all of that and more. Add the genius of Scholes playing an advanced role behind RvN (which he did to devastating effect) and it’s a midfield that will handle and produce anything.
McGrath and Scirea should complement each other beautifully. Everyone knows about McGrath, but Scirea, Italian World Cup winner, was arguably even better: an elegant defender (never got sent off in his career) who was fantastic at bringing the ball out. Evra provides the delicious option of overlapping Gento while Brennan is a solid right back (part of United’s first European cup win) who will allow Ronaldo to operate freely.
