The 120th minute at Old Trafford. A Liverpool corner breaks to the edge of the Manchester United area, where Wataru Endo and Harvey Elliott should have it under control... but they seem to confuse each other. Amad Diallo nips in to steal it and suddenly United are away.
Alejandro Garnacho streaks forward with the ball, only Conor Bradley is back to defend, Amad races in support to Garnacho’s left. Time seems to slow down... will Garnacho take Bradley on or will he draw him and release Amad...in the end, he does neither. The pass isn’t quite right for Diallo to run on to, it looks like Bradley will get across to block him... but Amad, improvising brilliantly, turns a bad pass into good one, he makes it look like he’s going to cut inside, and Bradley checks his run, which gives Amad the space he needs to set the ball on to his left foot – his stronger foot, does Bradley even know? – and shoot to the far post... football, bloody hell.
The FA Cup is not the greatest competition in the world, as some people still pretend to believe, nor is it the pointless exercise others dismiss it as. On Sunday it produced one of the games of the season and Manchester United’s best FA Cup moment since the 1999 semi-final replay against Arsenal. This 4-3 win against Liverpool was not quite in that league – Ryan Giggs’ goal that night was an all-timer and the Arsenal win was part of the story of the Treble – but this was surely United’s best Cup moment of the present century.
That the game became an epic owes a lot to the rule changes. If they hadn’t got rid of quarter-final replays it would have ended 2-2 on the note of a stunning Marcus Rashford miss (albeit one which turned out to be offside). Instead Rashford had the chance to redeem himself by scoring the equaliser for 3-3. Amad, who scored the incredible late winner, was his team’s fourth substitute of five.
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Two years ago the Ralf Rangnick-led management team were not convinced the physically slight Amad had what it took to play Premier League football. He went out on loan to Sunderland and played a brilliant 2022-23 season, only for an injury last summer to rule him out until December.
He had played only 66 minutes of football this season, spread across three substitute appearances, before Erik Ten Hag turned to him in the 85th minute and told him he was coming on for Raphael Varane.
As substitutions go this is about as risky as it gets. But for once a Ten Hag gamble came off. On 87 minutes Garnacho caused chaos with another dribble into the area and found Antony, who wriggled free of his markers and turned to score into the bottom corner.
United had rescued the game, the only problem was they now had only two defenders on the pitch. The improvised solution was a back four of Diogo Dalot on the right, Antony on the left and in the middle Harry Maguire partnering Bruno Fernandes, whose job was to start the plays from the back.
Maybe Ten Hag was looking at Liverpool thinking, it’s okay, these guys aren’t going to do anything. That, it turned out, was pretty much what Jurgen Klopp was thinking.
Liverpool had dominated the second half and had the chances to win the game, notably a five-on-two counterattack in the 79th minute which Cody Gakpo and Harvey Elliott combined to mess up. But they didn’t have the stamina to play another half hour.
“It was the first time I saw my team really struggling,” Klopp said of the extra-time period. The Liverpool manager had already walked out of a surprisingly irritable interview with Viaplay TV. “Normally intensity is the name of your game, so how come it became so difficult in extra time?” the Viaplay man asked.
Klopp turned into angry Flanders. “Bit of a dumb question I would say... We have played I don’t know how many games recently, I don’t know how many United have played, that’s sport. I’m really disappointed about that question but you thought obviously it was good.”
“So, too many games or...” the reporter replied uncertainly.
“Ohh, I don’t think that, come on. You are obviously not in a great shape and I have no nerves for you,” Klopp said, pushing past the interviewer and away.
It was hard to understand why Klopp was reacting so angrily. Yes, Liverpool have had a busier schedule than United in 2024: this was their 18th match of the year, and United’s 12th. But why should the question itself be considered deserving of a contemptuous response?
If any fool should be able to see that his players have played more games than they can handle why did he play so many first-XIers in the Europa League on Thursday? Liverpool had won the first leg against Sparta Prague 5-1, yet Mohamed Salah played 90 minutes of the second – a game Liverpool were leading 9-1 on aggregate after 15 minutes. Salah was withdrawn after 77 minutes at Old Trafford: two minutes before that five-on-two break. Did somebody mess up the order of priorities?
Klopp’s anger will sweeten the win for United. A semi-final against Coventry promises a reunion with Mark Robins, whose goal against Nottingham Forest saved Alex Ferguson from the sack 34 years ago. Win that and they are likely to face Manchester City in the final for a second successive year. They couldn’t stop City’s Treble last year, but maybe they can stop the double-Treble.
Doing that would allow Ten Hag to sell this season to the Ratcliffe regime as a story of cruel setbacks followed by ultimate progress. The United manager referred wistfully to the match against Arsenal at the Emirates early in the season as a sliding doors moment. In the 87th minute United should have had a penalty. Then a Garnacho goal for 2-1 was disallowed. Then Declan Rice scored a goal that should have been disallowed, according to Ten Hag, and United lost.
“Every team needs this moment, we never had that moment,” he said. “This could be that moment, when the team can really start to believe they can do amazing things. When you beat Liverpool in the way we did you can beat any opponent. It’s up to us to prove that point.”
