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FA Cup Final, or Strangeways, Here We Come
Arsenal beat Manchester United 5-4 in penalties in Saturday's FA Cup final. United failed to convert their total domination of the match into even a single goal, and Paul Scholes saw his spot-kicked saved by Jens Lehmann, which handed the trophy to the Gunners.
In truth, Utd lost this match back in March, when their manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, brought forward Ruud Van Nistlerooy back from injury too quickly, disrupting the system which had flourished in the Dutchman's absence, and which emphasized the passing and movement of Ryan Giggs, Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney. The trio had stampeded through the Premiership, winning at Highbury and Anfield, and hauling Utd back into contention, but the re-introduction of Van Nistlerooy, who, for all his brilliance as a scorer, can't play as anything but a static, penalty-box frontman, spoiled the harmony, and brought the goal supply to a halt. Utd scored fifty-eight goals in the league, while champions Chelsea, who lack a great center forward, managed sixty-four, and Arsenal tallied more than ninety.
The team began dropping points in bunches once Milan bounced them from the Champion's League. The aging Ryan Giggs was injured, and Rooney was shunted to the wing in his absence. Thus was Utd's offense reduced to long-range, thirty-yard blasts from Rooney and Ronaldo. Rooney and Ronaldo are two of the best players in the world, but no team can win if all their shots come from outside the penalty box. Van Nistlerooy scores all his goals inside the box; he hasn't scored from outside the area even once in his Utd career. This is a good thing. Tap-ins and poachers goals are simple, dependable, high-percentage certainties, and the by-product of a properly functioning offense. Utd's offense doesn't function anymore; if it did, Van Nistlerooy would've scored in double-digits, even having missed two-thirds of the year through injury. He had three goals in the league this season. Three.
Rooney and Ronaldo don't provide Van Nistlerooy with the kinds of opportunities he enjoyed when David Beckham played for Utd. But Van Nistlerooy is not just a victim, he has muddied the waters by missing the few clear chances which have somehow found their way to his feet. The ugly fact is that Utd were better when Van Nistlerooy was hurt, and the whole team knows it, including him. That's why he keeps missing. The manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, has decisions to make now. His players stand too far apart in the current system. Dwight Yorke and Andy Cole played almost on top of each other, but Rooney and Ronaldo seem miles from Van Nistlerooy, who lacks the agility to keep the offense flowing as it did when he was gone. Because the Gunners ceded so much of the pitch, Utd defender Mikael Silvestre had the freedom to feed Wayne Rooney with longballs on the wing, but when Chelsea pressed Utd in their own defensive third, Utd bled three goals. Milan also victimized them this way. Arsenal could've done it, too. Anyone can see that this ain't working.
The single-forward system works if the forward is fast enough, as Wayne Rooney proved, and as Samuel Eto'o proves every game for Barcelona. The Board of Directors of Manchester United lacked the moral right to fire Ferguson, but Malcolm Glazer has bills to pay. The team will either find a way to score, or Fergie will be gone, with tacit fan approval.
In football, when you make a few chances at the start of a match, you create momentum. When you miss too many chances, momentum is transformed into fear, then to desperation. Lost opportunities, in football and in life, can drive you mad; they can drive you to divorce, or to your deathbed. The audience may not have noticed, because no one can match Utd for thrills, not Chelsea, not the Arsenal, not Madrid, Barcelona or Brazil, but when it looked like Utd were closing in on winning, as they blasted away at Lehmann's goal, the trophy slipped from their grasp. By the time they'd reached the penalty phase, Arsenal had momentum. Arsenal didn't have the burden of all those missed chances banging like regrets in their minds.
Utd were suffering the climax of their season-defining crisis, but Arsenal were solving their own by eschewing the open, attacking football which so long has been their tactic. They had lost two leads against Utd at Highbury last January, so their manager, Arsene Wenger, heretofore the John the Baptist of attacking, made what may prove to be a decisive change in his career by actually playing defensive football. Watching the Gunners employ what the Italians call catenaccio-ten men behind the ball, no attempt to penetrate the opponent-was a bit like seeing the Pope worship Allah, such has been Wenger's contempt for this strategy (To paraphrase Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho, he parked the team bus in front of goal). Wenger did everything but apologize after the match, and the press didn't like it either; AP called it øa complete travesty. A sporting robbery of the highest order,Ó and The Guardian called it øhorrid.Ó When Utd beats Arsenal, the press always pretends that it was otherwise; they criticize Ronaldo for petulance, say Keano is a bully, and Rooney vulgar; they say Ferguson is ruthless. Today, all of England's media love Utd. Strange. Of course, no one will remember Wenger's tactics next year, or even next week. Wenger knew his captain, Patrick Vieira, would be thwarted by Keane in open play (as exclusively predicted on FootballGangster), so he ceded the midfield to Utd. He knew Sol Campbell lacked the poise for a final, and replaced him with teenager Phillip Senderos (as exclusively predicted on FootballGangster), who clung for dear life to Van Nistlerooy, but who didn't make mistakes or get sent off, as Campbell always does. Wenger assured Campbell in the press that he'd get his place back next year. Yeah, right. Maybe if he moves back to Spurs.
Wenger knew Lehmann would blow it (as exclusively predicted on FootballGangster), and Lehmann almost did on three occasions, straying from his line twice on corners, and failing to guard his near post against Rooney on the break, but because he-Lehmann-was always surrounded, because Ljungberg was there to head a sure goal off the line, the sheet stayed clean. This was a different, more pragmatic Wenger who we haven't seen before. His teams are routinely dumped from major competitions because of poor defending. Perhaps he has tired of picturesquely losing, and playing bridesmaid to Utd, especially since both of them are bridesmaids to Chelsea. He needed a trophy to keep his team relevant, and standing in his way were Utd, a team he hadn't beaten in nine matches. For the first time in his Arsenal career, Wenger did what he had to do. The spectacle was ruined, romance was destroyed, and we all felt dipped in shit, but a large part of empire building is dirty work. Wenger has come of age.
Here are the facts of the match. Utd had twenty-three shots, and didn't score once. Van Nistelrooy missed a clear header in the first extra time, and a tap-in in the second, when he dummied the ball to no one, and it rolled away to safety. The ex-master's profligacy has Utd fans wondering if a move would best for the club, and for him. Wayne Rooney missed every kind of long-range shot, including free kicks, fabulous volleys, etc. Ronaldo mastered Lauren, Ashley Cole, Kolo Toure, Jose Reyes, Patrick Vieira, Robert Pires and Frederick Ljungberg. Jose Reyes was sent off in extra time, after a dismal and foul-heavy performance. Real Madrid? Try Real Salt Lake. Robin van Persie almost scored from a dead ball, forcing Roy Carroll into his only save of the match, and Utd missed on countless free-kicks. They have never replaced this aspect of David Beckham's game. Arsenal hung on for dear life and won in penalties. For a moment, the Gunners had transformed into Chelsea-unromantic winners-and Utd became the Gunners: gorgeous and defeated, with Ferguson and Van Nistelrooy as their Antony and Cleopatra. Rio Ferdinand actually wept. This round of the neverending battle to the Arsenal.
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