Yet seven days out it feels more like City are simply ironing out the last details of the season, rather than heading into the European game’s biggest final of all with the usual jeopardy.
One of the opposition’s two first choice strikers is Edin Dzeko, whom they sold seven years ago. They bear down on Istanbul and the Champions League final on Saturday like the most irresistible of forces. You wonder if he recognises a lot of his great sides in this one created by Abu Dhabi.įerguson’s treble team of 1999 conspired many times to throw away what became the club’s greatest-ever season – only always to rescue it at the death. A well-timed retirement ten years ago was supposed to have saved Ferguson from these kinds of horrors and yet he insists on putting himself through them on a regular basis.
Kevin De Bruyne was the first player substituted.Īs the FA Cup winners came up for their medals, Ferguson as well as David Gill and one of the six Glazer siblings, the ponytailed Avram, were obliged to shake the hands of every beaming man in blue. Erling Haaland charged the United defence to create the space in behind but never looked as certain of scoring. The strange thing was that for all Guardiola’s protests to the contrary, this was not a vintage City performance by their towering standards. First on the list will be not to concede within the time it takes to tie a pair of shoelaces. They did not go the way of Watford, beaten by six in the FA Cup final four years earlier by Pep Guardiola’s winning machine, but then it still felt like the divide was uncomfortable for them. Of course, from that point, with Sir Alex Ferguson barely back in his seat having carried the FA Cup onto the pitch, the thought was that it could have been much worse for the deposed kings of Manchester. A chaotic Manchester United who conceded within 13 seconds – needless to say, a record for an FA Cup final - and then spent much of the game with that indignity firmly in their minds. This was the last roll of the dice from the English game to stop them. Only Internazionale of Milan, the third best team in Italy this year, stand between Manchester City and what feels less like the jolly treble of yore and more the establishment of a dictatorship of sorts of domestic and European football. By Sam Wallace, Chief Football Writer at Wembley