disbelief was still the same. Manchester United, already a
global phenomenon, are champions now of all that they survey
and Bayern Munich are left to lie somewhere in the pool of
tears that we saw so dramatically at the Nou Camp. One
minute had changed lifetimes.
Rinus Michels, the doyen of trainers, the Dutchman credited
with overseeing the Total Football that flowed from Cruyff
to Gullit, attempted to answer the question on everyone's
lips. Had even he, engaged in senior football since 1946,
ever seen such a great escape? "Of course," he responded,
"in my dreams. This was the summit of unreality. Neither I
nor any person involved in this extraordinary game have
ever, or will ever see such a finish."
He spoke, as so many did, of the astonishing depth of
belief, the courage, both physical and mental, of United.
And Michels, in common not just with football men but also
with the marketeers who are now driving the sport, agreed on
something else: Manchester United FC is already the most
powerful football brand name on any continent of this world.
It is a lingua franca, the proof that a slightly irrational,
compellingly inspirational game can and will travel where
neither language nor culture nor creed can prevent it
The question back home is whether this could be the turning
point between England and Germany. In 1970, Sir Alf Ramsey
made two substitutions that were blamed for losing the World
Cup. West Germany, personified by Franz Beckenbauer, now the
president of Bayern Munich, took advantage. And it has been,
until Barcelona, the Germans strutting around with the
silverware, the English and so many other nations lying with
sore heads and scant belief of what had happened to them.
"The winner is the only individual who is truly alive,"
Vince Lombardi, the renowned American football coach, once
said. No one was more alive, in this sense, than Teddy
Sheringham. If you had asked anyone - anyone at all,
including Alex Ferguson, the United manager - one month ago
what significant role Sheringham might play in the history
of United's great years, you would have been met by
blankness. Now, as a substitute, Sheringham had been the
catalyst to the winning of the FA Cup at Wembley and, as a
substitute, together with Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, the magician
pulling the goals out of the hat something that was already
fitted for Munich. But what lasting effect, what hope for
the English game, can this win really have? The fact is that
United had been second to the ball, second in their gameplan
and tactics of football for 89 minutes. So please let us not
draw false conclusions that this testifies to the strength
of the FA Carling Premiership. It is the strength, singular,
of Manchester United, the culmination of that combination of
talent, desire and sheer team effort that Ferguson has
breathed into his teams. It has taken 13 years at Old
Trafford, taken 35 unbeaten matches this season and taken an
absolute triumph over the British system.
For United had been handicapped, as English sides before
them, by the priorities that make England's one of the
biggest leagues in the world and which cram into the final
weeks of the long marathon three such dramatic peaks as
this. Full credit to United - and there is promise in their
comparative youth that they can rise again before this squad
reaches its full potential.
For Bayern Munich, it may not be so. We have no right to
doubt the German resilience, for it has been part of our own
sporting history, the way that we have been second, or
worse, to them since 1966. Bayern, the club with the fifth-
highest turnover in Europe, will come again; yet United are
ahead of them, ahead of everyone and everything in the
following that they have attracted since the 1958 air
disaster in Munich. Travel to the Far East and you really
feel the pull of United.
The reason that Rupert Murdoch wanted to buy the club was
that he, like other television entrepreneurs, is working to
capture the Asian market, particularly to harness the
untapped power of China. There, a billion new viewers mark
the potential profits and nothing - absolutely nothing -
could open more franchises than United's Red Power.
United already has its own television station, in
partnership with BSkyB and Granada. That is why, the moment
that victory was secured, a microphone bearing the MUTV logo
was thrust in front of Sheringham and why that image was
transmitted to 500 million viewers in more than 200
territories of the world. United will soon be in the air
again, bound for the Far East, with a stopover for a
lucrative match in the new Sydney Olympic Stadium. Everyone
wanted a piece of them before that dramatic denouement in
Barcelona. It is reckoned that United replica shirts outsell
those of AS Roma in the Eternal City.
This is the future, the game as a business, the business
identified through the brand. After a Swiss international
marketing consultant had listened to post-match analysis, he
commented: "I have a Chinese wife, I know through her that
the Chinese are even more brand-orientated and more faithful
to the brand than we Europeans. If you say something against
Gucci over there, you are in big trouble; the same with
Manchester United."
The winning brand, for the team that took just a minute to
confirm that it is the ultimate winner