Hail, the great entertainers

Hail, the great entertainers

Manchester United Have Seduced Us More Than Mourinho’s Bulldozers, Writes Paul Hayward

One clumsy and costly lunge by a Chelsea defender known as The Cannibal was the final act of this Premiership title race.
Quite right, too, because Jose Mourinho’s men were eaten alive by Manchester United in every department except courage. To Mourinho on Sunday night, a BAFTA for his masterclass in hiding his teams deficiencies behind a wall of emotive language about persistence and dedication. He’s right, of course, to praise the stoicism of his shattered troops. But let’s please acknowledge the truth that United entertained and entranced us more than Mourinho’s Bulldozer XI, who regressed the day they sacrificed the verve of Mourinho’s early years in favour of rule by suffocation.
So power has been his downfall. Stick that in the pipe of irony and smoke it. With the battle over, this is the day to shine a light on one of the fundamental differences between the fallen champions and United, whose manager Sir Alex Ferguson tried an F1 champagne celebration in a TV studio but succeeded only in soaking his own trousers.
You would think he would know how to do it by now. From Cornwall to Carlisle and across huge swathes of Manchester, naturally United’s fans are acclaiming their glorious leaders ninth Premiership title in 20 years. More than that, they stormed Roman Abramovich’s Winter Palace playing the kind of football most of us see in our dreams. This is where Ferguson is beyond reproach. For 21 years this November, he has dedicated every working hour to building teams that act for the heart and the imagination.
When did you see a Ferguson side play peek-a-boo football or build a cave and hide? Attacking football is Ferguson’s religion, and the more pleasing on the eye the better.
Sorry to all Chelsea’s followers, who have shown commendable patience and loyalty in a civil war zone this year, but Mourinho is not conversant with the language of beautiful football. His mission is not to chase marks for artistic merit but to conquer and subdue.
This is Ferguson’s fourth masterpiece. His first and, to many of us, still the best titlewinning side expressed itself through lacerating wing play of a young Giggs and Kanchelskis, the fearsome marauding of Ince and Robson and the defendercrushing muscularity of Hughes.
With this compound of artistry and menace, Ferguson ticked off the first of his great challenges: to consign Liverpool to darkness. The second prototype was built around Schmeichel, Cantona and Keane, before the class of 1992 Scholes, Beckham, Butt, the Neville boys and the imperishable Giggs graduated to full European honours in the Treble-winning season of 1999, with the ample assistance of Yorke and Andy Cole. The fourth embellishes a 20-year foundation with the captivating skills of England’s Rooney and Portugal’s Ronaldo, thus enabling Ferguson to say he h a s fused
t h e
best of
our country’s footballing heritage
with southern European exuberance.
So the Rooney-Ronaldo partnership expresses both halves of Ferguson’s philosophy. And yet, the two young buccaneers were unable to inspire United to victory over AC Milan in a Champions League semis. For that reason alone, it’s senseless to elevate the regaining of the Premiership at the expense of a regressing Chelsea over the glories of 1999: the most spectacular single season haul by any British club. But it has the look and feel of justice: an invitation to Chelsea to rejoin the entertainers. DAILY MAIL

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