SPECTATOR SPORT
United will fall
Simon Barnes
AS the Manchester United season (formerly known as the football season) moves into its brief aestivation, the thinking football person (not necessarily a contradiction) Ponders on the distance by which Manch- ester United will win the Premiership next season and, at the same time, scans the ground for seeds of destruction. They can be seen, but will they germinate? Some seeds need very special conditions before they will produce green shoots: it has been said that the vegetable known as IVOry palm must pass through an elephant before it will sprout. The seeds of Manch- ester United's destruction must undergo an equally dramatic process. The team won the Premiership with ridiculous ease. As the owner of the great racehorse said, 'It will be Eclipse first, the rest nowhere.' So most observers must say of Manchester United next season. They won their last 11 matches. In a league in which four points is a considerable margin, they won by 18. They scored 97 goals; Ars- enal, who finished second, scored 73. And yet they will regard the season as a failure; the players will come out next sea- son hungry and angry, because they failed to progress beyond the quarter-finals of the European Champions' league, the competi- tion for the Continent's big cheeses. The domestic competition is a mere bauble.
Everything in football is geared towards increasing the wealth of the wealthy, a pro- cess that began in 1985 when home clubs were permitted to keep all their own gate- money, instead of sharing it with the oppo- sition. At a stroke, parity of competition was ended. Successive changes in football have increased the power of the powerful.
Manchester United, one of the richest clubs in the world, have used money and power to drive a pattern of relentless improvement. They have now won the top division six times in the past eight years. What is to stop them going on for ever? Well, the same thing that stopped the West Indies cricket team, Liverpool Foot- ball Club, Bath in rugby and Wigan in rugby league. It is the same thing that stopped the Roman and the British empires, for that matter. Time.
Time is more merciless even than sport and, since sport is real life on fast-forward, we must look for the disunion of Tri- umphalism United some time soon. There is a trace of frailty in the team's occasional outbreaks of wild ill-discipline, in the ban- tams-on-a-midden relationship between the chairman, Martin Edwards, and the manag- er, Sir Alex Ferguson.
It is on Ferguson that the matter rests. His management of troublesome players has been inspired. But Ferguson plans retire- ment in a couple of years and last week he was talking about the possibility of an ambassadorial role to follow. The question of how the succession is handled is perhaps the biggest issue in domestic football.
A falling-off is inevitable. Liverpool are supposed to be rebuilding, and yet they are still as far away as ever from the topmost bananas. Manchester United's turn to fade away must surely come. They will no doubt one day build a statue of Sir Alex and per- haps they will write on the plinth: 'Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!' Sir Ozy- mandias Ferguson has quite a ring to it.
Previous page
