Another season another disappointing end for Manchester United in the Champions League, United exited from the group stage after dropping their final game of Group H to German side RB Leipzig 2-3. And for the first time since the 2012/13 season that United have lost back-to-back Champions League group games.
Manchester United were on top of the group H from Day1 and entered the matchday6 fixture needing just 1 point to advance to knock-outs. But early defensive fallout at RB Arena – Leipzig cost them in big way.
Many of pundits ,including our experts predicted the group H (Group of death) outcome when the 2020-21 fixtures were revealed. So it’s not entirely surprising that Manchester bow out of the competition in the worst possible way, failed to score at-least 1 point from final 2 games.
United manager Ole made five changes to the side that came back – again – to win at West Ham at the weekend. David De Gea, rested as a precaution for the Hammers clash, returned between the posts, while Luke Shaw, fit again after a hamstring injury, lined up in a five-man defence. In front of them, Nemanja Matic, Bruno Fernandes and Marcus Rashford were all back in the starting XI, with Anthony Martial and Edinson Cavani missing through injury, and Fred suspended.
Leipzig, who needed to win to qualify for the knock-out stages, took a very early lead on 2 minutes through danger-man Angelino, who fired home at the back post. Amadou Haidara added a second, on the volley, 11 minutes later and Leipzig had further chances to increase the advantage, including a disallowed goal by VAR for a clear offside.
After Bruno Fernandes hit the bar with a brilliant free-kick on 68 minutes, the home team claimed a third when a deflected cross was allowed to travel all the way through to substitute Justin Kluivert to compound United’s frustration.
Bruno Fernandes pulled a goal back from the penalty spot in the 80 minute, before substitute Paul Pogba rose to meet a corner, with the ball deflecting in off Maguire and then Ibrahima Konate to make it 3-2, but it was sadly too little, too late for the Reds.
Post-Match Reactions:
Ole Gunnar Solskjær, Man United manager: “We started too late. We showed great spirit to come back again, but you can’t give a team a 3-0 lead and expect to come back. We were unlucky towards the end. I thought the character and the effort was there.”
“Of course you can’t say we were good enough, we weren’t good enough. The big defeat for us was away to Istanbul, that’s the one you look back at and think we lost the points we should have had. Today we were close, but we knew we had to defend crosses and balls into the box. We just couldn’t clear them.”
As a footballer you can’t feel sorry for yourself. You can do for a few minutes tonight, but that’s it. We have a massive game on Saturday [against Manchester City] and we need to focus on that.”
Harry Maguire, Man. United defender: “We started the game too slowly. We weren’t good enough in the first 20 minutes. We weren’t at it and they scored from their first two chances. We failed to deal with the crosses and that’s why we’ve been beaten. We gave ourselves too much to do. We were close to coming from behind, but ultimately we started the game too slowly and we can’t afford to keep giving goals away and falling behind.”
“We said [at 2-0] that the next goal was crucial. We put all sorts of pressure on them and they ended up scoring with their first attack of the second half. We still had belief, but the third goal in the match proved to be the crucial one. Even when we went 3-0 down we knew we had to score next. We came close in the end.”
“There are 11 bodies out there who need to be aggressive. It’s the basics of football, if you can’t do those then you’re going to lose football matches. I don’t want to look at shape. We looked more comfortable after going two goals down, but it’s not an excuse. It’s a tough group, but we thoroughly felt like we should get through. I’m the captain, I’m gutted in there for everyone. We tried so hard last season to reach this competition. Everyone at the club deserves to be in the competition. We’ve got to do more.”
Willi Orban, Leipzig defender: “We found the space very well in the first 25 minutes, which is something we spoke about before the game. We should have scored more goals in the first half. It’s a big statement from us [getting out of this group], building on last season’s semi-final.”
