LONDON – It was one of those timely moments, when the dedicated note-taking sportswriter notices he has reached the bottom of the page, with regulation time expired and the evening’s tale told. But with three minutes of what they still fondly call “injury time” to be added on to the 90 minutes, another page had to be turned. And upon it, a story that took an hour-and-a-half to complete was completely rewritten inside two minutes.
In Barcelona last night, Manchester United looked dead and buried, trailing 1-0 to Bayern Munich from the sixth minute of action in the European Champions’ Cup final and pretty much pinned to the canvas since the moment when Mario Basler curled a simple right-foot shot around a feeble defensive wall.
Everything Manchester, a team accustomed to routinely crushing its opponents, could construct in the way of cohesive offense was snuffed out by a ruthless Bayern backline expertly marshalled by 38-year-old Lothar Matthaus. Then Basler, already with one goal to his credit, would orchestrate more dangerous maneuvers, and the more the clock ticked on, the closer Munich came to glory.
Jens Jeremies charged through Manchester challenges with ease, and when Jesper Blomqvist spooned the best chance the listless, nervous English team had carved out over the crossbar early in the second half, it seemed this particular match had assumed a pattern familiar to so many major contests over the years.
That is, one team snatching the advantage in the early exchanges then denying the opposing team possession while the clock counts down, sneaking forward occassionally to try to make that lead 2-0 and put the lid on it all. That nearly happened twice in the last 12 minutes as Basler set up substitute Mehmet Scholl for a right-foot lob that beat goalie Peter Schmeichel but rebounded back off the goalpost.
Moments later Bayern was again denied by a matter of millimeters when Carsten Jancker launched himself to connect with a bicycle kick following a corner that hit the crossbar. While Bayern coach Ottmar Hitzveld could count these near misses as bad luck, he still believed the match was won – otherwise he might never have removed two of his most effective players, Basler and Matthaus, from the action.
His opposite number, Alex Ferguson, had a few tricks up his sleeve too, introducing Teddy Sheringham, MVP of last Saturday’s FA Cup win, and Norwegian baby-faced hitman Ole Gunnar Solksjaer off the bench for what seemed a last, desperate throw of the dice.
Back to that fateful 90-minute mark. Time had already officially expired and the electronic board with the number 3 on it symbolized only the minutes that Bayern had to use up in time-honored fashion: by taking as long as possible over goalkicks, booting the ball into the far corners and most of all, doing what Bayern has excelled at all season long, keeping possession.
This is a team that put together an eight-game streak without giving up a single goal, so the very idea of cracking in the dying seconds was never even considered. But then goalie Schmeichel charged upfield to break the Bayern defenders’ concentration, and while they were watching him, Sheringham got the final touch at close range. At 1-1 overtime, and the sudden-death goal that would settle it, would seemingly decide this contest.
It was weird, spooky and just not what Bayern was expecting after dominating for so long. Their fans had been chanting victory songs for the past 20 minutes, and there was the sudden horrific realization that the Bayern players had already given everything that they had, that their legs would not collectively stand up to further punishment.
Manchester smelled blood, and at a corner kick taken by the heroic Mr Spice David Beckham – goalie Schmeichel stayed back in his natural habitat at the other end of the field for this one – Sheringham touched the ball on for his fellow substitute Solksjaer to rifle the ball into the net, an astonishing moment that seemed to take place in slow motion.
Heaven for Bayern had become hell in a matter of seconds.
Champs of England in both Cup and league and now kings of Europe for the first time in 31 years, Manchester has proven itself as a great, great team, for this triple is a once-in-a-lifetime kind of achievement. The team is already breaking up, for this was Schmeichel’s swansong – but what a way to go out.