The Young Boys fans hung around their Wankdorf Stadium long after the win against Manchester United, drinking and singing and doing what football fans once took for granted. Barring one of the old clocks from the old stadium, on the same site which staged the “Miracle of Bern” 1954 World Cup final, plus the 1961 European Cup final and 1989 Cup Winners’ Cup, the Wankdorf looks like a regional shopping centre from the outside. It’s no San Siro.
“Bern is no hotbed of football,” wrote Simon Inglis in his seminal 1989 book Football Grounds Of Europe, “and the resident club Young Boys seldom attract crowds above 10,000.”
That was then. Four titles in five years after one in the previous 48 shows how football can shift. Fans follow success at every club. Manchester City may struggle filling their home for Champions League group games, but football fans usually want to be part of the glory. Numerous Manchester United supporters’ clubs had four times the number of ticket enquiries for Cristiano Ronaldo’s debut game as usual and Old Trafford could have sold out its 74,000 capacity three times over.
In the Swiss capital, anxious locals held signs asking for tickets outside the stadium. They wanted to be part of a crowd which was a cauldron on Tuesday long before Young Boys’ goals and the only spare seats were in the away end. We’ll come to why.
Young Boys’ victory will long be remembered in Switzerland and was headline news in the country, front pages using a picture of either a falling, upset or angry Ronaldo. From being starstruck at the superstar in their midst to celebrating his defeat, it was a David defeating Goliath story. Not one of the home fans I spoke to before the game thought their team would draw, let alone win. But this is one reason we love football.
The travelling United fans – and it still remains a delight to write that – were not the usual crowd. Uncertainty about the allocation that was only agreed six days before the game, Covid entry requirements and extra costs of Covid tests saw many regulars replaced by those from the continent who didn’t have such worries, but a hardcore were there and they’d drunk all the cold beer in the closest hotel to the ground after the game.
They were disappointed but pragmatic; going down to ten men didn’t help and it was the first of six group games. Besides, the game is only part of a trip that makes up a significant part of their social life.
Defeat was no knockout blow. There’s an online overreaction when Manchester United win or lose that doesn’t reflect well on fans or the media. United would have no players left within a month if they listened to fans online and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer would have been sacked several times over – and that would please some fans who doubt him – but his name is still loudly sung by those at matches.
The majority have got his back but they’re not blindly loyal and this is a key time for the Norwegian: fail to get United out of this group and he’ll rightly be hammered for it. This is his team, lavishly remunerated and expensively assembled over the three years he’s almost been in charge. No words will be able to excuse another slide into the Europa League or worse, even though United aren’t favourites to be lifting the big one in St Petersburg in May.
United may have started the Premier League well and sit top thanks to a superior goal difference going into Sunday’s match at a strong West Ham, but it’s different in the Champions League. Defeat in Bern will be forgotten if United qualify from Group F, but the team’s Champions League record under Solskjaer is a poor one.
He’s lost seven of his eleven Champions League games since the first, a home defeat to PSG in 2019. PSG (again), Barcelona (twice), RB Leipzig, Istanbul Basaksehir and Bern have all beaten United. The defeats are not isolated and all were extremely costly, leading to elimination. United have lost four of their last five Champions League matches.
Statistics can give a skewed picture and United’s form in the Europa League saw them record excellent away wins in 2021 against Real Sociedad, AC Milan and Granada, but the Istanbul loss was supposed to be a freak result. It wasn’t.
Solskjaer has to get this team out of the group. Those on the playing side at United were relieved with the Champions League draw after the tough one last year and Villarreal and Atalanta’s draw on Tuesday may help. Aaron Wan-Bissaka’s sending off didn’t and nor did the artificial surface, but these are marginal points.
I asked Solskjaer about any reaction to the defeat in Bern and if the Champions League form concerned him. “You wait to see the attitude when they come back in (to training),” he said. “They’re focused, a bit disappointed, but not too downbeat. You know it’s a setback and you have to do better. You have those five games to get those ten or 12 points that you need (to qualify). It’s not the start we wanted but we’re a good team who can bounce back again and the group is very good.”
All sensible stuff. What else can he say publicly, knowing any flicker of anger with be fanned into a storm? His point about how the pendulum swings wildly was right, too.
“In the media you tend to be judged by the behaviours and the outcomes rather than the intentions,” said Solskjaer. “It’s black and white. We go into the games with good intentions and make changes with good intentions. We go into a tackle with good intentions, play a pass with good intentions, but it’s the outcome which decides what headline we’ll see. Very rarely is a game either fantastic or really bad. We know expectations are high and we expect more of ourselves. The performance wasn’t up to our standards.”
After a defeat, the best thing that can happen for United is another game. Solskjaer’s side have started this season far better than any of his others and on Thursday he said: “I’m getting there with my team. Team players.”
He’ll always want more players, always want to improve, but it’s not unfair to judge him now and the first proper judgement of this season will be coming before Christmas if he’s not out of the group. Solskjaer provided United’s greatest ever moment in Europe when his extending toe defeated Bayern Munich 21 years ago. He can’t afford to get it wrong in Europe this season.
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