Manchester United Secures Premiership Title

A couple of weeks ago, English soccer was poised for a glorious and amazing ending to the 2006-2007 campaign. Manchester United (also known as Satan’s Team) and Chelsea were set to fight it out for the Premiership, the Champions’ League crown and the FA Cup. The calendar had it all coming down to three head-to-head matches. Apparently, the soccer gods decided that would be too much fun for mere mortals. The wheels came of Chelsea’s wagon in the last fortnight, and yesterday, Manchester United mathematically secured the Premiership Title.

The first of the three great matches that might have been was the Champions’ League final. Liverpool, a perennial thorn in Chelsea’s side in that particular competition, took the semi-final on penalty kicks. Meanwhile, the next day, Manchester U lost to AC Milan 3-0, wiping out a victory of the same score in the first leg and making the final Liverpool against Milan. While it will be a decent match, it is bereft of drama unless one regularly cheers for either side.

The second big match would have been Wednesday. Had Chelsea managed to beat Newcastle and Bolton rather than draw both matches, they would actually have been a point ahead of Manchester going into this week-end. Chelsea’s draw against Arsenal would have put them a point behind Man U with three games to play. Instead, Wednesday match is about pride rather than silverware.

Nevertheless, the third big game really will happen. The FA Cup final is set for May 19, and both sides will have something to prove. Chelsea needs a win to justify a huge payroll ($500 million is rather a lot merely to win the League Cup, the least important of the 4 trophies on offer). Man U will want to add another trophy to this campaign, and to do it against their London rival makes the prospect of winning all the sweeter.

Quite why the season is ending like this is hard to say. Petr Cech, the Chelsea goalkeeper, missed numerous games after a skull fracture against Reading. Jose Mourinho, the Chelsea manager, may have tried too hard to win too much silver, while Roman Abramovich, the owner, was a bit miserly at transfer time (and too profligate over the summer, e.g. Andrei Shevchenko). And then there’s Sir Alex Ferguson, the Man U manager, perhaps the best coach in the world (damn him).

However, in the words of every Brooklyn or Los Angeles Dodger fan who ever really cared about the team, “Wait till next year!”

© Copyright 2007 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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