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Victory for Man United is improbable but Barcelona are not unbeatable

Andy Mitten |

March 15, 2019

THERE'S a war of attrition going on at home with my eldest daughter about which football team she should support. She’s eight; she was born and raised in Barcelona. She’s educated in Catalan, her mates all support Barcelona – apart from one who likes Espanyol.

Yet she’s a Manchester United fan. She has to be. She has no choice because it’s the team of her father, the team of the family. That’s how I see it. Sadly, she doesn’t always agree.

“But dad, I’m from here,” she’ll frequently remind me. “You are from Manchester, you support Manchester. All my friends support Barça and everyone at school says that Messi is better than Pogba.”

How do you come back from that? Well … you take advantage of a friend having a spare junior ticket and you take her to Arsenal against Manchester United in the FA Cup. You go in the away end and hope for the best, a win – and that she’ll enjoy it.

You abandoned plans to do the same at Brighton in August on account of your wife saying: ‘this is just stupid and expensive.’ She called it right in that United lost that game. But January flights are a fifth the price of August flights and a night in London could be used as an excuse to do a school project on Europe’s biggest city.

In London, United won 3-1. It was a magical cup tie with 5,300 away fans creating a non-stop din against a huge rival. I kept looking at my daughter in her red, white and black scarf. Everyone was so friendly with her, from the stewards to the fans around her. I’d like to say it was the best night of her life but she said she was cold and it was too noisy. Telling her “that’s a good thing, it’s loud, the team need support!’ didn't really wash.

After the game, lads who’d travelled from Manchester made a fuss of her before they took got on their coach back and sang United songs. She liked that, she thought all dad’s mates were a bit crazy as they draped an ‘Olegend’ flag over her.  

She also liked the purchase of something called  ‘build a bear’ the following day. I wanted to surround the one night trip to London with things she’d like so that she would associate the trip with a good time, and thus the game with a good time and thus Manchester United with a good time. And that, naturally, would end up with her becoming a United fan. It sort of worked.

Three days later she had to give a presentation to her class on her trip to London. It included footage of her being surrounded by fully refreshed football supporters singing ‘Ole’s at the wheel’. The Catalan kids marvelled at it, they saw a football world away from Barcelona. This Mancunian cultural imperialism was working.

Three days after that, I caught my daughter teaching her younger sister ‘Ole’s at the wheel’. Now they know all the words and sing it regularly. Everything above is of course not to be taken absolutely seriously. She chooses her own way in life, but when I hear both of them giggling and singing ‘We’ve got Sanchez, Paul Pogba and Fred’ it makes my heart soar. When I hear her say that Manchester is her favourite city too.

The work to make sure they become United fans is nearly done, but victory against Barcelona in the Champions League quarter-finals will surely seal it. If those kids can go into school the next day with United having won then I can't think of a better scenario. My wife tells me there are more important things in the world to worry about.

Victory for United over Barça is, sadly, improbable. Barça are the best team in Spain, better than Real Madrid, who have been the best team in the world for four of the last five years. Barça have the second leg at home, where they routinely move up through the gears and get stronger as the game goes on.

Teams struggle to get the ball from them, though Lyon had a decent 15-minute spell on Wednesday. Barça have Lionel Messi, the best player in the world. He’s in form, too. Dazzling form. So is Gerard Pique and if you ask Barça fans who the best goalkeeper in the world is, they won't say David de Gea. Marc Andre Ter Stegen is magnificent.

But come on. United have beaten Juventus and Paris Saint-Germain away this season, the latter with a virtual B team. There is always hope. I’ve watched Barça lose at home to Betis and drop points at home to Girona, Athletic Bilbao and Valencia.

The Catalans should win a seventh La Liga title in a decade and they’re in a fifth consecutive Copa del Rey final (having won the previous four). Barca stretched their unbeaten home run in Europe to 30 matches when they battered Lyon 5-1 on Wednesday. Messi was sublime, as was Ousmane Dembele when he came on, but the young Frenchman is injured and might not be back for the United games in April.

Barça are spectacular, but they’re not unbeatable. Most Barça fans may be hard to please but they still don’t consider this side a vintage one. Not yet. It’s a pragmatic, effective team, one good enough to outclass Madrid in the Bernabeu almost whenever they play.

They can – and do – turn on the absolute magic in games as they did when they beat Spurs at Wembley earlier in the season, but they’ve had their wobbles and their issues. Coutinho has not had an impressive season, Luis Suarez – who’ll get a wonderful reception at Old Trafford – has endured fallow periods. When no-nonsense coach Ernesto Valverde recently signed a contract to stay for next season, it wasn’t a given.

And it’s wonderful that these two giants of world football have been drawn together in a home and away tie for the first time in 11 years. This is what football should be about and if the games are half as good as they were the teams met in 1994 (ignore the away leg) and 1998, if it’s half as absorbing and exhausting as in 2008, we’re in for a treat.

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