Adam Dennehey WAFU manager
You may remember a while ago we featured an interview with a Basel fan about his take on the Champions League draw, after he learnt that his side had been paired with Manchester United in this season’s competition.
Of course this week Basel got a well deserved draw at Old Trafford as they came back from 2-0 at half-time to turn the game on its head with United having to rely on a late Ashley Young goal to stop the Swiss Champions from gaining arguably their biggest history in Europe.
Here that same Basel fan – called Martin – looks back on the game from Tuesday night:
There have been a lot of discussions in the office about what tonight’s result will be. Most of my mates agreed that Basel would be happy tonight if they don’t suffer a hammering tonight. If they could come away with a 2/3-0 defeat then that in all honesty would be a good result for us.
In one of our national papers, Marco Streller one of our strikers said that United if they wanted to could score up to 6-7 goals tonight. On the national radio the majority of the pundits were predicting a 5-0 defeat for Basel, which is not nice to hear at all!
After getting back from work, I watched the game together with my wife. The game started with Basel attacking with Fabien Frei wasting a chance after 5 minutes. Then United as we feared started to click into gear as their offensive game came to the fore with good combinations ripping us to shreds. .
Seeing the two goals within two minutes by Danny Welbeck after 18 minutes was literally like there being a knife in my heart, even despite already expecting us to be losing at some stage of the game bearing in mind what Streller and the Swiss media have ‘told’ me. However Basel didn’t give up and Alexander Frei and Jacques Zoua both had chances to score before half-time, but they didn’t and United went into half-time 2-0 up.
During half-time my wife and I didn’t focus too much on the game and relaxed drinking wine and chatting with the screen on in the background. We did though hear the Swiss TV pundits’ comments during the halftime break, which in effect were: “Basel tried, but wasn’t successful, not lucky, or even good enough, problems with the coordination between the forwards and the backfield.”
The Pundits expected that the second half would be quite boring and that United wouldn’t need to really work hard with the game in effect being won and would sit back not giving Basel a chance to get back in the game. How wrong they were, as Basel came out at the restart with a lot of energy.
They wanted to get something out of the game and wanted to take an opportunity rather than sit back and wait for one. Streller had a great chance which was saved by David De Gea and with that chance missed; you could sense that the guys were now fighting harder for every ball, running even harder to get to the ball, because they knew the game was there to win.
All of a sudden from a corner on 58 minutes , De Gea parried the ball out in front of a poorly controlled penalty area for United and Fabien Frei 15 yards out hammered the ball in off the post. As soon as I saw the ball hit the net, I knew that anything would be possible for us now and begun to believe.
A one goal advantage is never enough, not for Basel at home and not also for United at home, as the game would prove two minutes later. A brilliant counter attack by Basel was too good for United’s defence to cope with and Fabien Frei from the sidelines put in a brilliant ball into the area which Alexander Frei scored with his head to incredibly put us on level terms.
My wife and I were still discussing Rio Ferdinand’s foul on Alexander Frei as our no.13 headed the ball home past De Gea in goal. It was a stunning moment of play where we thought our chance of getting an equalizer had gone only for us to get our deserved goal 20 seconds or so later.
In my opinion the foul Antonio Valencia made on Streller was a clear penalty and I wasn’t afraid that Alexander Frei would score from the spot, after all he’s got a good record from the spot. So that was it, with the penalty converted it had incredibly put us ahead. Yes, Basel were beating the great Manchester United in their own backyard.
Any fan thinking that the game was won then would have been a fool, as it was then that the hard work started for us. Would it be really possible, that the ‘Wunder vorn Old Trafford’ (the miracle of Old Trafford) could actually happen. Could it?
On Television, you could hear the Basel supporters getting behind the team supporting the boys. It was good to see that they were inspiring the players on and that thy incredibly still had energy in the later stages of the game and were not running out of steam like we did at home to Bayern Munich last season when we were 1-0 only to lose steam in the final 15 mins, which let the Germans take control.
As for me, I couldn’t sit on my couch anymore and was standing in front of the TV – walking up and keeping my fingers crossed. It looked like we would pull it off as whenever there was space for a United attack, there was always a Basel player there to stop it and break it down.
Our manager Thorsten Fink you could see was trying to talk to the players during the final few moments and was clearly giving instructions to the boys when Granit Xhaka and Pak Kwang-Ryong were brought on in the final 10 minutes. United also made changes with Berbatov coming on and with Nani beginning to get more of the ball, my heart was beginning to beat more and I was getting more and more nervous as the clock began to click down.
Then it happened! On 90 minutes, Nani sent in a brilliant cross into the area, which found Young at the far post who headed home past Sommer to make it 3-3 with three minutes of added time still to be played. The seconds dropped like honey and the referee even had the cheek to put an extra minute on ttop of that. My wife couldn’t watch the game anymore and my heart was pumping, looking for the cardiac stimulator.
Thankfully the whistle went and the game finished as a draw. I am still not sure as we enter the weekend if I am truly happy with the fact we got a point or sad at the fact that we lost two thanks to that late goal by Young. If someone had offered me that score before the game, I would have taken it. But after that game, after these chances – I have to say they’ve been that close – really a little disappointing…
The next day – everyone was talking about that great game. In the office, in the Newspaper, on the radio – everywhere headlines and interviews with Fink and the players. I think Alexander Frei hit the nail on the head after the game saying that whilst it was a ‘great moment’ for the team at the moment we can’t buy anything with it and there are still four games to go, so Basel has to refocus now.
I am looking forward more than ever for the rematch back on December 7th that St Jackob-Park and hope for a great game between the two sides. I am sure that it will a hard game for United and that with our best player Xherdan Shaqiri back, Basel might surprise your team again.
