The Indian Express (Delhi Edition)
Manchester is United again
Recent unbeaten run helps Mourinho’s side garner support and love from Old Trafford fans
THE STANDS seemed to shake with noise — guttural, heartfelt, desperate. It might not have led to a winning goal, but it left an impression.
“It was really loud when they scored the goal,” said Jürgen Klopp, the Liverpool manager. Mourinho had gotten what he wanted. Old Trafford had found its voice.
Atmosphere, though, should not be mistaken for aura. That is what has been missing from this stadium for three years, and what Mourinho has been expected to restore.
He knows that, of course. As he said a couple of days before this game, there is no such thing as an “intimidating” atmosphere in elite sports, no matter how loud, no matter how frenzied. The players are too singleminded, too experienced, for that.
There is, though, such a thing as an intimidating venue, a place that can overwhelm even the hardest heart and the coolest mind.
That is what Old Trafford used to be, when United was in its pomp. Both Steve Bruce and Mark Hughes — managers themselves now, and alumni of Sir Alex Ferguson’s first great United team — use the same phrase to describe the sensation. “Teams,” they have said, “were beaten in the tunnel.”
The recollections of visiting players suggest that impression is not rooted in arrogance. Robbie Earle, who came here a number of times during his peripatetic playing career, confessed that his primary concern when facing United at its peak had been to “get out of here without a hiding.”
“It was never acknowledged, but not many people would complain if they could walk away from Ferguson’s Old Trafford having lost by one or two goals,” he said.
It took Ferguson years — a decade, at least — to imbue this stadium with that aura. His successors needed just two, if that, to wash it away.
Under David Moyes and Louis van Gaal, Old Trafford lost something. Teams no longer arrived desperate to keep the score to a minimum, or left happy if they had simply given a good account of themselves. They came not with hope that they might record a victory, but with belief that they could.
Mourinho is starting to undo that perception. United has had its blips this season — draws at home with Burnley and Stoke and West Ham, a painful loss to Manchester City — but since Mourinho’s humiliating return to Chelsea in October, something seems to have clicked. United had won its last six games before Liverpool came to town and had avoided defeat for 15.
The quality of performance varied, but United had rediscovered a knack for dispatching relative small fry with a minimum of fuss. This game seemed to serve as a genuine test of how far Mourinho’s team had come. It ended, though, as proof of how far there is still to go.
Liverpool knows what it is like to lose an aura. For years, teams lost in the tunnel at Anfield, too, crumbling at the sight of that famous sign.
And then, 26 years ago or so, it went. The noise remained — though that, too, has been in abeyance for some time — but the effect was different. At times, the pressure seemed to inhibit the hosts and inspire the visitors.
Even now, with a towering new stand and a rabble-rousing manager, Anfield is not what it was. As much as neither team would appreciate the comparison, what Liverpool faced after the collapse of its empire remains the most fitting — if by no means perfect — parallel for the post-ferguson United. And Liverpool’s experience would suggest the magic, once banished, never returns, not quite.
Mourinho does not believe that. He cannot believe that. He is employed, specifically, to disprove it.
He remains some way from achieving it, though: Even with a starting 11 weakened by the absence of four key players, Liverpool did not show a flicker of fear here, even in those last five minutes, as the noise rumbled and echoed and crashed onto the pitch, as Mourinho got what he wanted.
Old Trafford had found its voice. That is the first step. The fans did what was asked of them — they brought the atmosphere. Now it is Mourinho’s turn: to build a team so intimidating, so ruthless, that games are won and lost in the pregnant silence of the tunnel.
NYT