Have you done it yet today? How many times?
Have you done it yet today? How many times?
I ask because I recently learned about a practice known as rawdogging, in which men – it’s always men, isn’t it? – spend the entirety of a long-haul flight staring at the real-time map of their journey to the exclusion of all else. Of course, this is all about mindfulness and has nothing whatsoever to do with exhibition attention-seeking – unlike its near-cousin, Red-dogging, an activity predicated on the purity of staring at Kobbie Mainoo’s Cup Final goal to the exclusion of all else.
Many of us have been lucky enough to see United win everything. At a barmitzvah recently, a teenage Liverpool fan spent a fair bit of time reminding me that we’re shit and he was right, problem being that even if we never win anything ever again, I’m inured against all football pain because my football pleasure is so intense and extreme – a residual gift of the Fergie years. So why, two months on and at the age of 45, am I still buzzing on a daily?
Well, discourse may have decided the Cup is of less significance than previously, but that doesn’t mean I have. Though winning it is less a mark of quality than winning the league or Champions League, football isn’t just about success, it’s about glory and memories. So while it’s true that I’ve attempted to turn entire seasons into one long, uninterrupted celebration, it’s impossible to replicate the mood and feel of a day that starts without a trophy and ends dancing about with one. And if, to that, we add context and nostalgia – Cup Final day as unifying religious experience, evoking childhood memories of all-day telly people getting together – and you have a perfect framework for joy.
That’s the general bit, but there’s more to it than that. The Cup is special to United: it was the first trophy Matt Busby delivered and the 1948 final helped establish its tradition of great football in exciting matches; reaching the 1958 final, mere months after Munich, was a phenomenal achievement leaden with symbolism; in 1963 it became the club’s first trophy since Munich; and it then saved the 70s and 80s. All of which makes perfect sense: a show of romantic, cinematic and historic resonance, beamed around the world to millions, is the absolute height of United.
Sally Wainwright, the Happy Valley creator, once said that while writing the series, she never forgot advice she got from a therapist: the feeling which drives people to do the most out-of-character things is shame. Which is to say that the previous season, United had been part of City’s treble – a sensation the players cannot have been keen to revisit. Likewise, for us, who inhabit the real world and actually have to deal with the real-world consequences of their behaviour. I was in my first year of university in 1998-99, meaning it was the also the first year I was in charge of my own football-going, and also meaning the treble is an achievement over which I’m so protective, I was almost relieved when Portsmouth won at Old Trafford in 2008. As such, I experienced extreme relief when Wigan and Chelsea intervened in 2018 and 2021, only to discover I’d been playing myself all along: when it happened, years later than it should’ve happened, no one gave a fuck. In my own mind that’s because I’ve filed everything they achieve under “Cheating”, but the apathy was global not localised – which is to say that only Manchester City can make a treble irrelevant.
Nevertheless, there are better ways to spend a day than losing a second straight derby Cup Final, and the players seemed to know that last season’s performance, though not dreadful, was nevertheless embarrassing, a tame, limp, flaccid attempt to avoid getting battered while hoping to somehow scavenge a goal at some point. The match was a particular frustration because United had, through the course of the campaign, proved their ability to beat anyone on a good day, but the absence of Lisandro Martínez meant they were weaker at the back – weak enough to concede after 12 seconds – and almost entirely unable to pass the ball out.
This time, though, Martínez was fit, just, and so was Raphael Varane. Suddenly, United had centre-backs they could rely on, and our allocation of the sunny end on a sunny day cemented the idea that there was something to be done.
Erik ten Hag, meanwhile – though news of his imminent sacking had broken the previous day – sent his team out with a plan that, in a truly amazing turn of events, they seemed to fully understand. Fergie-style, he’d rehearsed things in previous games so that, when the day came, it made sense for Rasmus Hojlund to be on the bench; for Aaron Wan-Bissaka to twinkle-toe at left-back; and for Sofyan Amrabat, not Casemiro, to give away fouls and possession at the base of midfield.
Also crucial was the return of Marcus Rashford. Though he’d had a(nother) poor season, some of it his fault, some of it not, however thoroughly he’d earned an omission, it was almost impossible to visualise victory without also visualising him playing a key role, so in he came and rightly so.
Much as I’d relish the opportunity, you don’t now need me taking you through the match. So suffice to say United delivered the best performance of the Post-Fergie Wilderness YearsTM, every player finding a level close to their best.
Even in that context, though, the winner was special, a sweeping move of improvisational perfection that took the ball from one end to the other. There’s a school of thought common among football understanderers which concedes that Fergie was an alright man-manager who did nothing to move the game on tactically – one which this passage totally disproves. It was not until 1992-93 that we started seeing this kind of thing on a regular and now every side wants to do it. Or, in other words, the goal was, in nature and execution, a slice of pure, uncut United.
In more ways than one. Central to it were three youth-team graduates, while its cleverest part, Bruno Fernandes’ final pass, was fitting reward for a captain who has largely wasted his peak years for United, flogging body and mind in seeking to redeem the epochal dross around him. One of few Wilderness Years players who’d fit into a Fergie side, Bruno stands out not just because of his ability and mentality, but because the ABU nation refuse to accept what his numbers and their eyes assert repeatedly and unequivocally: this is a fantastic footballer.
Ultimately, though, art exists to describe that which cannot be communicated in words, and a disgustingly young, disgracefully brilliant Manc turning one of the great moves into one of the great goals has language well beaten. But the swaying, bouncing melee of exploding humanity, sharing ecstasy and love, football and United, spoke with an eloquence that will reverberate for eternity.
So, again: have you done it yet today? How many times?
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