Follow live from Bilbao today as we build up to the Europa League final between Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester United.
“Thursday night, Channel 5,” Manchester United fans gleefully chanted at their Liverpool counterparts back when United were Champions League regulars.
From 1993, United qualified for Europe’s top competition every single season until Sir Alex Ferguson’s departure, winning twice and reaching two further finals and three semi-finals. For United, the UEFA Cup/Europa League was a tinpot consolation for clubs which couldn’t cut it.
But not now.
United are the Europa League regulars these days. They won the trophy in 2017 (the only competition United hadn’t won since it superseded the UEFA Cup) under Jose Mourinho in Stockholm. They reached the final again four years later under Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, in Gdansk against Villarreal. United lost that one 11-10 on penalties and Solskjaer lost his job five months later.
“Well, there’s something missing: a trophy,” Solskjaer told The Athletic in 2023 when asked to sum up his time managing United. “One penalty could have changed that and my time there would be viewed differently. Trophies are important for a club like Man United and I understand that, but for me it was also important to lay down the foundation of good performances and I did that.”
Four years earlier, and with United stuttering in the Premier League in Mourinho’s first season, the Portuguese ruthlessly and effectively targeted the Europa League as a way into the Champions League, defeating Ajax in the final.
It wasn’t a glorious run by any means. Unlike this season, Old Trafford was seldom full, with a crowd of only 58,179 for the visit of Zorya Luhansk from Ukraine’s Donbas. Rostov, from just over the Russian border, were another opponent. Saint-Etienne fans were hugely impressive in the knockout stage and Vigo’s beaches were a pleasant surprise for travelling fans in the semi-final, but it was all about the final.
“From the first whistle, Jose Mourinho’s team offered a clear message of their own,” UEFA’s technical report declared. “With the third touch of the ball, United’s Ajax old boy, Daley Blind, directed an angled ball to the head of Marouane Fellaini in opposition territory.
“Immediately, Ajax’s defenders were under pressure. Ander Herrera made an interception, Juan Mata supplied a cross and Andre Onana, the Ajax goalkeeper, collided with Joel Veltman as he sought to clear. The ball landed at the feet of Paul Pogba and he placed a volley narrowly wide. The clock showed just 25 seconds.
“The early pattern was set: United would get the ball forward quickly, press high up the pitch and do their utmost to unsettle an Ajax side with an average age of just 22 years and 282 days — a record for a European final. Mata and Henrikh Mkhitaryan together chased down Hakim Ziyech by the corner and Pogba soon made his powerful presence felt too.
“In the first 20 minutes, United just played long balls to put the Ajax defenders under pressure and it worked.”
Pogba scoring against Ajax and Onana in 2017 (Julian Finney/Getty Images)
Ferguson, watching as a technical observer, noted: “Jose knew exactly how they were going to operate and set his stall out to make it difficult for them by playing the long balls and putting them under pressure to keep turning them back towards their goal. That was a change in tactics from Jose. Throughout the season, they’ve had a lot of possession and played a lot of good football but they identified one or two weaknesses, including a lack of experience.”
Mourinho, who had watched Ajax eight times in the lead up to the final, had noted how they won the ball high up the pitch and worked on a strategy to counter that. He said as much pre-match: “Ajax are going to press hard. I don’t know if they are able to do what they want to do.”
Looking back later, Mourinho said of his tactics: “If the ball’s not there, what are they going to press? For me, beauty is not giving your opponent what they want. There are lots of poets in football, but poets, they don’t win many titles.”
Two days after the Manchester Arena terrorist attack, the win had extra significance for fans, Mourinho and his family. Mourinho’s son broke through security to run onto the pitch to hug his delighted father, who was satisfied that he’d won a “treble” (of sorts) in his first Old Trafford season: the Community Shield, League Cup and Europa League.
After winning the 2017 Europa League, United’s next two European campaigns were in the Champions League. Mourinho’s defeat by Sevilla in the 2018 round of 16 was the start of the slide that would lead to his exit later that year. Solskjaer’s team famously overcame Paris Saint-Germain to lose against Barcelona in the 2019 quarter-finals, before it was back to the Europa League in 2019-20 and another elimination by Sevilla, this time behind closed doors in the Cologne semi-final.
Unlike now, United knew they’d be playing Champions League football for 2020-21. But in that campaign, they could only finish third in the group and dropped into the Europa League. Their form picked up, though Covid-19 restrictions were still in place. Real Sociedad were defeated 4-0 away in, er, Turin. Milan, with Diogo Dalot, were also beaten away in San Siro in the last 16, then Granada were defeated home and away, with one of Marcus Rashford’s finest goals for Solskjaer’s team, expertly controlling a Victor Lindelof pass before finishing.
Again, that was played in an empty stadium, though 5,000 noisy Granada fans did welcome their team outside it. There were no Roma fans outside Stadio Olimpico for the semi-final second leg, but then United had won the first leg 6-2. Bruno Fernandes and Edinson Cavani — an important player that season — got two each. After four successive semi-final defeats in 15 months, Solskjaer needed to get beyond that stage and he did with a final in Gdansk against Villarreal.
The pandemic regulations again limited the crowds to around 10,000, with 2,500 United fans, some of whom had to go through four Covid tests, 10 days in quarantine and travel for 14 hours to try and get to the Polish city.
The absence of injured Harry Maguire, then considered a key player, was felt, but Villarreal were Spain’s seventh-best team; that’s why they were in the Europa League. After 120 minutes of football, it was 1-1 and went to penalties. Drawn at 10-10, it was time for both goalkeepers to step up. The spot kicks were taken in front of the yellow shirts of 2,500 Villarreal fans.
“I was angry when it was my turn to take a penalty, angry because I’d let 10 penalties in and thought, ‘Gero, you have to score now’,” Villarreal goalkeeper Geronimo Rulli told me three months later. “I’d studied a lot of the Manchester players and how they took penalties. But you study and then your mind goes blank.
“I tried to save every penalty but it didn’t happen. I had a lot of responsibility. My team-mates were scoring every single penalty. I touched five of them and couldn’t prevent a single goal. I’d looked at my partner in the stands before each penalty in the hope she could inspire me to save every single goal. None were saved. I felt like a failure. My team-mates were not. They had scored; I had not saved.”
David de Gea wished Rulli good luck. Rulli went first with his penalty and scored. De Gea, the only player Rulli hadn’t studied, ran towards the ball.
“When he ran, I felt it would be difficult for him to shoot strong,” said Rulli. “When he opened his leg, I thought, ‘He’s going left’. I saved it. There were two or three seconds when I was alone. I turned to see my partner. I didn’t see 20 or 30 people running to jump on me; my team-mates, the coaches. It feels incredible just to talk about this moment, I will never forget it. We had won the cup.”
Rulli saves De Gea’s penalty to win the Europa League in 2021 (Kacper Pempel/Pool/Getty Images)
I spoke to Solskjaer pitchside after the game. It was 1am and he put on a brave face.
“I could have stood here and been really happy if the penalties had gone in but the performance wasn’t good enough to win the game,” he said. “We had two shots on target, they had one. It was a final where we were feeling each other. We had much of the possession and the pressure but we didn’t create enough good chances.”
There was speculation about his future.
“There are two ways you can go,” he said. “You can feel sorry for yourself and go on holiday and come back sulky for next season. Or you can use this feeling as a springboard to give even more. Most of them (the players) have been good and working hard.
The coaches have been fantastic and we’ve come a long way from the bad start we had but the feeling is that I need tonight to reflect and analyse. And then tomorrow I’ll probably be more positive again and look forward.”
Solskjaer joined his players on a flight back to Manchester chartered by club sponsors Aeroflot. He arrived home at 7am, slept for a little over two hours and went back to United’s training ground by mid-morning, where he planned in more detail for next season with assistant manager Mike Phelan.
Then he met John Murtough, de facto sporting director, to talk about some of the changes he wanted to continue after what he saw as improvement: third in the league and a European semi-final in 2019-20, second and a European final a year later — but United fans weren’t feeling convinced after Gdansk.
Solskjaer’s side were blessed with supreme attacking talents, but needed to learn to break down stubborn defences. Home form was patchy, away form superb. The United of 2021 went behind in too many games and were overreliant on Fernandes.
The solution was to buy Cristiano Ronaldo, Jadon Sancho and Raphael Varane that summer. Fans were ecstatic; the atmosphere at Old Trafford for Ronaldo’s first game was off the scale.
Yet within nine weeks, Solskjaer would be out of a job. A win in Gdansk would have brought him a little more time, but as his predecessor Mourinho had shown, not much more.
After 13 league defeats, Ruben Amorim needs a win. And then some.
(Top photo: Getty Images)