Champions League success was particularly significant, marking the arrival of the Premier League as a serious European force. Many European performances by top English clubs during the 1990s were embarrassing; United were once eliminated by Rotor Volgograd, Blackburn by Trelleborg, Arsenal by PAOK Salonika. But in 1998/99 United battled past Bayern Munich, Barcelona, Inter Milan, Juventus and then Bayern again to lift the trophy. ‘Europe had become a personal crusade,’ Ferguson later said. ‘I knew I would never be judged a great manager until I won the European Cup.’ His adventures throughout the 1990s were essentially a long, gradual learning curve.
In terms of United’s default system, relatively little had changed. Ferguson continued to use a 4–4–2 – and arguably more of a classic 4–4–2 than the system dominated by Eric Cantona, who had made it more 4–4–1–1. Cantona had retired in 1997, and after Teddy Sheringham initially proved an underwhelming replacement, United signed Dwight Yorke at the start of the Treble campaign. Alongside Sheringham, Andy Cole and Ole Gunnar Solskjær, United now had four genuinely top-class strikers, with pundits left pondering how Ferguson would satisfy them all. Solskjær had finished as United’s top goalscorer in 1996/97, Cole took that honour in 1997/98, while Sheringham had been Tottenham’s top goalscorer four times and Yorke was Aston Villa’s top scorer three times. These weren’t players accustomed to being back-ups.
Although Yorke dropped deep into positions between the lines, he was more of a conventional striker than Cantona and, crucially, struck up a brilliant partnership with Andy Cole. This was a surprise, as many predicted Cole would suffer from Yorke’s arrival, and he was heavily linked with a move to Yorke’s former club Aston Villa. Ferguson admitted he had no particular partnership in mind when signing Yorke, and his first game alongside Cole, a 0–0 draw at West Ham in the second game of the season, was fruitless. But Cole and Yorke became great friends, with Cole inviting United’s club record signing to his house for dinner and helping him adjust to life in Manchester. They became inseparable, even buying identical purple Mercedes with near-matching number plates. ‘I remembered my own isolation, the life of the hermit,’ said Cole. ‘I didn’t want anyone else to suffer in the same way; I realised I could help him settle in.’
Strikers don’t necessarily need to be friends to strike up a great on-pitch relationship, as Alan Shearer and Chris Sutton had demonstrated, while Cole performed reasonably well with Sheringham, despite them despising one another, refusing to speak for years. But Yorke’s friendship with Cole mirrored United’s tactical development; Cole had previously been considered a difficult character – moody, quiet, something of a loner – which tallied with concerns about his limitations as a striker. Kevin Keegan had sold Cole because he believed he was a mere goalscorer and unable to bring others into play, but just as the cheerful Yorke connected with him as a friend, he linked play brilliantly and ensured United’s system involved Cole regularly. Yorke and Cole insist they never specifically worked on their interplay, but some of it was telepathic. Memorably, there was Cole’s legendary goal at the Camp Nou when Yorke came short, dummied the ball to ensure it ran onto Cole, who immediately played a quick one-two with Yorke, bamboozling Barcelona’s defenders before he converted smartly. It’s difficult to recall a better example of a brilliant strike relationship, and their understanding was typical of United in 1998/99. The 4–4–2 is all about partnerships, and United boasted five balanced, reliable double acts ahead of Peter Schmeichel.
At the back there was Jaap Stam and Ronny Johnsen. After Stam initially encountered difficulties with the pace of English football, they formed a superb centre-back duo – sometimes interrupted by Johnsen’s injury problems – with Stam the hardman and Johnsen the cooler, calmer, more intelligent operator. Both were very quick, with Ferguson determined to use defenders comfortable defending one-against-one.
David Beckham and Gary Neville were good friends – Neville was best man at Beckham’s wedding – and also linked brilliantly down the right. Beckham was a wide midfielder rather than a speedy winger like predecessor Andrei Kanchelskis; his deeper positioning meant he shielded Neville excellently, his narrower position meant Neville could overlap into crossing positions. But Beckham was the star; no other Premier League player has depended so much upon crossing, and he claimed more assists than any other player in 1998/99, the campaign immediately after he’d been cast as England’s villain for his World Cup dismissal against Argentina.
On the opposite flank there was Ryan Giggs and Denis Irwin, a long-standing relationship that worked excellently. Giggs dribbled considerably more than Beckham, so Irwin overlapped less regularly than Neville, was right-footed anyway so less inclined to go down the outside, and was now 33 and happy to play a more reserved role.
Finally, in midfield there was Roy Keane and Paul Scholes. The former now occupied a deeper, more defensive-minded role that gave Scholes licence to push forward, spraying passes to Giggs and Beckham before bombing into the box to become a goalscoring threat. In fact, more than a midfield partnership, this should be assessed as a brilliantly balanced quartet: Beckham, Keane, Scholes, Giggs. A crosser, a tackler, a passer, a dribbler.
While Keane and Giggs had both featured heavily in Ferguson’s first great United side of 1993/94, Beckham and Scholes had yet to become regulars. They were different to the usual template for players in a four-man midfield, offering more guile; Scholes was a creator rather than a ball-winner (tackling was his major shortcoming), while Beckham was a ball-player rather than a speedster. This proved crucial in European football, where retaining possession was more important than in the Premier League, simply because, as Ferguson regularly explained in the mid-1990s, once you lose the ball in Europe, you don’t get it back quickly. Indeed, while United’s ‘class of ’92’ had been inspired by Cantona’s professionalism, it was Scholes and Beckham who benefited most from his retirement. Scholes emerged as a deep-lying forward ‘in the Cantona mould’, to use Ferguson’s words, and United’s manager explicitly said he’d long earmarked Scholes for a regular role once the Frenchman left United. Beckham, meanwhile, took Cantona’s famous number 7 shirt, became United’s chief assister and – albeit in a very different manner to Cantona – was the individual who commanded the most attention. Besides, Cantona had often struggled to influence Champions League games, in part because European opposition were more accustomed to dealing with deep-lying forwards. ‘I can’t recall one important European game that he turned for us,’ Keane bluntly stated.
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