Casemiro’s rigidity, his physical decline and his mental suffering as he lost balls under pressure from Liverpool, reflected Manchester United’s sclerosis. With the pre-season over and the summer transfer window closed, the 0-3 opened a wound whose depth is unprecedented in the history of the richest club in England. It is not about going down to the Second Division, as happened 50 years ago, but something possibly worse. This Sunday it was confirmed that the entry of an owner English as Sir Jim Ratcliffe It does not imply the inevitable emergence of a great leader, nor a change of direction in the vertiginous decline that has degraded the identity of this countercultural club, the one that built the most and best attacking teams in England, to the point of transforming it into a house full of greedy and confused owners who do nothing but squander hundreds of millions of euros with no other effect than the discredit that comes with presenting teams year after year that aspire to close in at the back and counterattack, as if being dominated were a luxury aspiration.
0
Andre Onana, Matthijs de Ligt (Harry Maguire, min. 68), Diogo Dalot, Lisandro Martínez, Noussair Mazraoui, Bruno Fernandes, Rashford, Alejandro Garnacho (Amad Diallo Traore, min. 69), Kobbie Mainoo, Casemiro (Toby Collyer, min. . 45) and Joshua Zirkzee (Eriksen, min. 86)
3
Alisson, A. Robertson (Konstantinos Tsimikas, min. 83), Trent Alexander-Arnold (Conor Bradley, min. 75), Ibrahima Konate, Virgil Van Dijk, Alexis Mac Allister, Luis Díaz (Gakpo, min. 65), Dominik Szoboszlai , Ryan Gravenberch, Salah and Diogo Jota (Darwin Núñez, min. 75)
Goals 0-1 min. 34: Luis Diaz. 0-2 min. 42: Luis Diaz. 0-3 min. 55: Salah.
Referee Anthony Taylor
Yellow cards Joshua Zirkzee (min. 22), Lisandro Martínez (min. 40), Kobbie Mainoo (min. 46), Virgil Van Dijk (min. 55) and Matthijs de Ligt (min. 64)
Ratcliffe’s entry into the boardroom was preceded by political manoeuvring never seen before in English football. According to people who work for the club, both the British Government and the media endorsed Ratcliffe’s acquisition of 25% of the shares in December 2023, in the belief that one of the English institutions with the greatest global projection should be represented by an Englishman with a pedigree as a fan and not by foreigners such as the Qataris who sought to acquire all the shares held by the Glazer brothers, natives of the United States.
After the deal, Ratcliffe, owner of the oil company INEOS, shares ownership with Glazer, his Texan partners in the oil industry. Some executives have changed, but not the sporting vision that guides them, as the transfer market has shown. Since June, United has spent more than 200 million euros on players: De Ligt, a centre-back; Mazraoui, a right-back; Leny Yoro, another centre-back; Joshua Zirkzee, an attacker too young to transform momentum; and Manuel Ugarte, a defensive pivot that Paris Saint Germain discarded because they considered him a counterproductive midfielder in a team that tries to take the initiative with the ball under control. If Casemiro was the defensive pivot of reference for counter-attacking teams in the last decade, Ugarte belongs to the same family.
“Ugarte is a perfect piece for us because the team needs his courage for controlled aggression,” said Erik ten Hag, the coach, before receiving Liverpool without having been able to register the Uruguayan in time. It didn’t matter. United’s problem was not that they did not take the ball away from Mac Allister, Gravenberch and Szoboszlai with controlled aggression, but that they were unable to keep the ball when their opponents harassed Casemiro and Mainoo, the pivots. It is known that Casemiro, who has suffered from chronic pubic pain for years, does not like receiving the ball under pressure because it is difficult for him to shape up. It is also not new that Ugarte is not known for starting plays when he is under pressure.
“Lusi Enrique didn’t care”
“It took Luis Enrique a few months to realise that Ugarte didn’t want to receive the ball under pressure,” explains a person close to the PSG technical secretariat; “and then he didn’t care about anything and stopped using him despite the fact that the club had spent 60 million to sign him from Sporting.” United did not heed the experience of others. Under the auspices of Ratcliffe, who presented him as his big buy, United last week agreed to pay 50 million euros on the transfer plus 10 million in performance bonuses to acquire the midfielder. A relief for Al-Khelaifi and a pyrrhic advance for Erik ten-Hag.
The United manager, who made Casemiro the cornerstone of all his strategies last season, confirmed on Sunday that at 32 years of age the Brazilian is showing the symptoms of a finished player when he lost a handful of balls at the edge of his area, two of them successively turning into 0-1 and 0-2. In exchange, Ten Hag will have Ugarte, more vigorous at 23 years of age but much less experienced. His delayed registration prevented him from making his debut against Liverpool, but from what was seen on the field his presence would not have guaranteed any other result. Just as it has been happening for more than a year, United went out to attract the rival to counterattack, and when they saw themselves outnumbered on the scoreboard, after Luis Díaz’s first goal, they sank into a stupor. The more errors their midfielders made in bringing the ball out, the more Mac Allister and Gravenberch harassed them, and the more spaces opened up, since the central defenders, Lisandro and De Ligt, did nothing but retreat.
Built to cope with dominating pivots and strong centre-backs, Ten Hag’s United never knew how to turn a score around in the same way they suffered every time they tried to counter-attack teams that had a lead. Not against the oil tankers from Texas or the oil tankers from the North Sea. On Sunday, the team once again showed the limitations that have pushed it into its biggest identity crisis and accumulated its third consecutive defeat in four competitive matches since the season began with the Community Shield. The Dutchman Arne Slot became, in passing, the first Liverpool manager to win his first match at Old Trafford since Bob Paisley in 1975.
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