United’s outrage adds Puel to fire

Saints manager still seething at Champions League ‘dirty tricks’ and wants revenge at Wembley

IT IS now just over 10 years that Claude Puel has waited for revenge over Manchester United.

Raise the subject of Lille’s 2007 Champions League last16 clash at the Stade FelixBollaert and the normally mild-mannered Southampton manager immediately begins to seethe again.

It was seven minutes from time when United were awarded a free-kick. Wayne Rooney stood with the ball in his arms before suddenly putting it down on the ground with purpose.

Ryan Giggs was ready, and floated the ball instantly into the top corner of the net for a crucial away goal in a 1-0 victory for the Premier League side. Lille keeper Tony Sylva was still organising his wall.

United celebrated, while Puel appeared to call his players to the side of the pitch.

“The Lille staff encouraged their players to come off and that made it a hostile atmosphere inside the ground,” Sir Alex Ferguson said afterwards. “It’s a disgrace.”

Puel fought back: “I don’t know how that man Ferguson can allow himself to comment like that about this. He should have said nothing. The team were just making a protest.”

Yesterday, in the leafy surroundings of Southampton’s Staplewood training ground, the tune has not changed at all and Puel clearly still feels hard-done-by.

“I didn’t want to stop the game,” he said. “I was just angry about the free-kick because he did not allow us to put up a wall. It was an opportunity to permit Manchester United to win the game.

“There was no respect for us, I think, and the referee made a mistake. After this game, for the rest of the competition, all the players had to wait for the referee to blow their whistle before they were allowed to try to shoot.”

So if Jose Mourinho were to plan something equally despicable at Wembley tomorrow? “Now? It would be the same,” said Puel. “Because it was a mistake of the referee and it gave an opportunity to Giggs.”

As a club ambassador, Ferguson will no doubt be at Wembley tomorrow. “We have heard these things before from him – he likes to influence referees and inflame situations,” Puel said at the time. But then, undoubtedly, Ferguson is a winner – as too is Mourinho, below. The Portuguese was effectively still just a translator when Puel won the French Ligue 1 trophy in 2000 after just 17 months in charge at Monaco. Since then, Mourinho has led his various teams to 23 trophies. Puel is still waiting for his second. When he sits in a V-necked jumper in front of a handful of press men ahead of his club’s first Wembley final for 38 years, one cannot help but wonder if this is a man better suited to complaining about injustice than going out and creating history himself. Southampton have only ever won one really meaningful trophy – the FA Cup following an unexpected victory against, appropriately enough, Manchester United. It was a day when the unfancied south coast team grasped the nettle and in true David v Goliath fashion, went on the unexpected attack. You sense that Puel is placing his hopes rather more on somehow not losing. Central to that is stopping Zlatan Ibrahimovic, a player who scored 11 goals in eight games against Puel’s Nice side in French football. “I cannot be surprised about how well Ibrahimovic has done in the Premier League because I know him very well from the French Ligue 1. In France he was a fantastic player but all the people said, ‘Yes but it is not the Premier League’. But he has come here at 35 and shown he can do a fantastic job.”

Most expect his answer to that threat is Jack Stephens, a defender with only five Premier League games under his belt.

“There is a lot of attention on Jack, and for all these young players,” Puel said. “They must stay calm and just focus about what they have to do. But they must not just think about a good result or a bad result. The most important thing is to play this game.”

Or threaten to come off when things start to go wrong? It could be an interesting afternoon at Wembley.