Six years ago, Benfica were the harbingers of United’s doom and Lisbon’s fabled Estadio da Luz the setting. The scoreline was the same on Wednesday evening – a 2-1 defeat – but the lowly opposition, Basel, and the unhallowed venue, the raucous St Jakob-Park, made the disappointment even harder to swallow.
Rooney remains from that team, but there are no clear-cut indications that his present-day teammates will be able to rise to the challenge in the same way that United did when they last went out in the group phase.
Ferguson was unable to hide his displeasure at the prospect of a Europa League campaign.
“It’s a competition I’ve never been in with United,” he said. “It does mean one thing: Thursdays all the way through. That’s got to be dealt with. It’s not the best, but that’s our penalty for not qualifying tonight.”
Needing just a point to qualify, United had started in assured fashion but they were rocked in the ninth minute when Basel captain Marco Streller turned in the opener from Xherdan Shaqiri’s left-wing cross.
The visitors came close to an equaliser on several occasions before Alexander Frei made the game safe with an 84th-minute header. Phil Jones scrambled home for United with a minute to play but for once United’s injury-time onslaught proved fruitless and Ferguson was left to rue the disappearance of his side’s cutting edge.
Euro exits won’t change EPL race: Mancini
Meanwhile, Roberto Mancini has insisted the Premier League title race will not be altered by Manchester City and Manchester United slipping into the Europa League.
City beat Bayern Munich 2-0 but could only finish third in the group due to Napoli’s 2-0 win at Villarreal.
“I think that for the Premier League it changes nothing because both teams are in the Europa League,” said Mancini. “The difference is that the Europa League is harder because we play Thursday and we won’t have a lot of time to recover for the games but this will be the only difference.
“For City, it’s an important trophy because we need to win more trophies if it’s possible.”
Published in The Express Tribune, December 9th, 2011.
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