Green and yellow balloons bobbed around the Stretford End. Tennis balls rained down on the pitch in protest at the chronic, enduringly cinematic decline presided over by Manchester United’s ownership. Then came a reminder of the humble football’s extraordinary power to bend history, minds and wills. United’s players departed victorious having somehow won the game within the game, separating themselves from the fog of unhappy context swirling on all sides and turning the second half into its own soaring, ripping story for the ages.
Will it be enough to save Michael Carrick, who was once again serenaded when minds wandered from the joint scourges of the Glazer family and Jim Ratcliffe? If Aston Villa defend a shade more competently than Roma on Sunday then perhaps not. United have led their supporters, remarkable in their tenor of backing for players and head coach here, up more than enough false peaks over the past 13 years. Arguably, that is one reason for Carrick being given the job on a permanent basis.
Until United are equipped to repeat their second 45 minutes on a weekly basis, which requires systemic change in departments far outside the technical area, even if Carrick’s head will surely be first on the block, nobody is likely to deliver them from ongoing psychodrama. History may tell that his heavily maligned players were fruitlessly raging against the dying of the light in blowing Roma out of the water. But their achievement here was worth savouring for its discreet brilliance and, perhaps, the wholesome powers that ultimately wrought it.
Kobbie Mainoo had been introduced as “Manchester born and bred”, to obligatory cheers, when the teams were read out. Any emotional heartstring is worth plucking on at the moment but there was something grounding about seeing the midfielder, largely injured over the past month and an onlooker while his colleagues’ fortunes spiralled, return to the starting XI. Mainoo was far from alone in enduring a tentative, twitchy, flustered first half but was caught flat-footed when Marten de Roon mugged him near halfway, setting in train the move that exposed an execrably organised backline for Matías Soulé’s opener.
At 2-0, another crossfield ball from the left having triggered United’s defence into recidivism, Mainoo attempted to raise spirits by surging through the middle on his own and spraying the ball right under pressure. There was no more nourishing gruel on offer than this; the only nagging glimmer of possibility was that Roma, for all their broad control, did not look like the kind of side that would withstand any gale that came their way.
When Carlos Baleba, eye-catching in phases but loose in possession, pulled up with Bryan Mbeumo ready for a tap-in, the notes of misery deepened. But the subsequent introduction of Youri Tielemans, in his element against opponents whose intensity was evidently sagging, created angles and spaces that had previously seemed figments of the mind. United were fortunate when Bruno Fernandes converted his soft, twice-taken penalty; they were gifted parity when Leonardo Balerdi’s air-kick afforded Matheus Cunha a chance he could barely miss. The die, though, had long been cast through their waves of slick, insistent pressure.
So it fell for Mainoo and another academy product, Shea Lacey, to tee up the coup de grace. Lacey hails from Liverpool but there is no need to whisper that: his credentials since childhood have firmly passed muster. While Lisandro Martínez was lightly booed on to the pitch in the 75th minute, Lacey arrived with him to raptures. How poetic it was that Mainoo, speeding up an attack before quickly shifting the ball right, and the mesmerising Lacey, should complete the revival.
Lacey’s jink inside and left-footed pass whipped into Cunha were genuinely breathtaking. So was the finish and so, too, the reaction. Few do it quite like an Old Trafford crowd on a European night. This is still a citadel like no other, even if its strains nowadays alternate between dubbing Mainoo unplayable and impolitely requesting the Glazers to make haste back across the Atlantic.
The contradictions fizzed everywhere on this thick, still night. Earlier on Wednesday Carrick will doubtless have been spared the news that sacking season had already visited the Ineos football empire. At this point Jim Ratcliffe’s sporting citadels are more akin to a line of Dickensian rubbish heaps, their proprietor a modern-day golden dustman, and the plug had been pulled on Luka Elsner and United’s hapless junior sibling, Lausanne Sport. They are bottom of the Swiss top flight and results, a club statement explained, had been the determining factor in the manager’s demise.
They have not exactly helped Carrick either . Mainoo had claimed in a transactionally toned pre-match press conference that United could be “one win away” from changing the shape and scope of their season. In reality all that can be guaranteed about whatever occurs next is the sheer theatre of it. Of course it is Unai Emery, discussion whose suitability or otherwise for any United vacancy has brought surprising ramifications, who walks into this perplexing cocktail of loathing and unconditional support this weekend. Carrick will need the football to perform him a few more favours yet.
