Improbably as it may seem, another Guide Entry wings your way from our Great Guide Entry Giveaway. This time, a non-cricket sporting team pops up:
Manchester United
Manchester United are one of those football clubs with a long and varied history, much of it quite illustrious and glittering with silverware. My fascination (which may as well be the word from which ‘fan’, the short form used to describe fanatical followers, not just of football clubs but also of individual célébrité, was distilled), dear readers, began in 1997. I was immediately drawn to their red and white home kit colors, the same as my School’s Colors. Incidentally, we [the Lawrence School, Sanawar, which deserves its own A Life Afloat Volume 2 chapter – but more on that later] celebrated our sesquicentenary that year. David Beckham’s graceful play saw him get graced with the great number 7 shirt, worn previously by Eric Cantona and George Best. Then came that historic 1999 Champions League win over Bayern Munich, and my heart was set on being a Red Devil for life. And now in 2025, 28 years have passed. But rewind a bit, and…
Cut to 23 years later. As annus horribilis, 2020, the Horrendo[vir]us Year of the Crown, wound down, 2021, the Year of Hope, Year 1 of After Covid Era, dawned bright and new. In the case of Manchester United, both phases of our earth completing another spiral around our sun went well, despite being eliminated from the Champions League and hence erasing all hopes of a treble three-peat. For those of my esteemed readers unfamiliar with footballing terminology, a treble in (European) football is when a team wins both domestic titles (the top-flight league and the knockout competition) in addition to the Champions League of Europe.
History repeated itself in 2022 as Man U were sent packing at Old Trafford, the Theater of Dreams, by Atletico Madrid, despite the return of the talisman, Cristiano Ronaldo, the inheritor of the coveted Number 7 shirt, who could not do much by way of rescuing the Red Devils’ annus horribilis. Unfortunately, the slide tackles were only going to go even further downhill on desperation lane.
Statistics about their victories in competitions both domestic and international fail to capture how this team captured its fan following, yours truly included, in the second half of the 20th century. A 1958 airplane disaster in Munich gave new meaning to ‘rising like a phoenix from the ashes’ under Sir Matt Busby, culminating in top-notch performance over the next decades. The 1990s saw a new money-making scheme result in a top-flight Premier League, which new manager Sir Alex Ferguson’s Fledglings dominated. By the end of his era after more than a quarter of a century in charge of the team, SAF had stamped his authority on all, including kicking a boot at Beckham’s head!
After Sir Alex, things were never the same. Red Devils fans throughout our mostly harmless planet keep on hoping that the next manager will bring back the glory days…or the next, coming to the present manager at the time of writing, Ruben Amorim, who may get more time than his predecessors to build a legacy worthy of succeeding Sir Alex’s.
Only time will tell, as is the case with all things. Sports, like life, are utterly unpredictable. Happy hitchhiking! Visit Old Trafford if you happen to go that way, footballer froods!
–Aradhye Ackshatt