Manchester United must hope Old Trafford is still capable of afflicting Porto with stagefright. Sir Alex Ferguson’s team did not suffer irreparable damage on Wednesday but, after another flawed performance and the 11th red card of Roy Keane’s career, they will need an exhilarating display without their most inspirational player if their hopes of reclaiming the European Cup are not to be extinguished.
Apart from another reminder of their captain’s impetuosity, the most obvious deduction from a galling night for Ferguson and his players is that Porto are a far more accomplished side than that which lost 4-0 at Old Trafford in the quarterfinals of this competition seven years ago.
Keane will be sorely missed when they renew acquaintance on March 9, but even if he were available there could be no guarantees of the English champions turning this tie upside down.
United’s captain was sent off for a sly stamp on the Porto goalkeeper Vitor Baia shortly after South Africa’s Benni McCarthy had scored his second goal. Baia’s histrionics infuriated Celtic in last season’s Uefa Cup final but though his extravagant body-rolls here may have influenced the referee Herbert Fandel, television pictures incriminated Keane for an act of frustration that may well bring him a three-game suspension.
Ferguson was so angered that at the final whistle he waved away the attempts of Porto’s coach Jose Mourinho to shake hands. But his assessment was charitable to Keane, to say the least.
‘Roy stood on the lad — whether he could get out of the way I don’t know, because it’s not the sort of thing he would do,” Ferguson said. ‘It was not malicious and you have to say the goalkeeper made a meal of it. Referees should watch videos of teams to prepare them for diving.”
The manager went on to point out that writing off his side has been a dangerous pastime, but it is clear that not only must United overcome the absence of Keane — they desperately need to tighten up in defence.
There was good sense in Ferguson’s decision to leave out John O’Shea, one of the players implicated in Keane’s recent criticisms, and to move Gary Neville alongside Wes Brown in the centre of defence, but there were still periods of the match, particularly in the final exchanges, when United looked anything but secure in front of Tim Howard’s goal.
Porto’s reputation as one of the continent’s most accomplished attacking sides is not exaggerated, yet Ferguson is entitled to believe his players were reckless, having begun the match with more panache than even their most optimistic follower can have dared imagine.
They should have been more ruthless once their South African, Quinton Fortune, had put them ahead. Had Ruud van Nistelrooy not misjudged Fortune’s cross a couple of minutes later, squandering the sort of chance he could usually be relied upon to score blindfolded, it is doubtful whether Porto would have been able to summon up the inner strength to make the return leg anything other than a formality.
Instead, Van Nistelrooy’s wastefulness precipitated a prolonged spell of pressure from the home side that eventually saw them draw level when McCarthy peeled away from Neville and Brown to meet Dmitri Alenitchev’s cross with a clinical right-foot volley.
McCarthy’s second goal was equally impressive, a superb header beyond Howard from Nuno Valente’s cross, but again there were questions about the marking. In between, Phil Neville produced the type of mistake that has undermined United recently when his back-pass was intercepted by Carlos Alberto only for Howard to deny the 19-year-old Brazilian.
United’s management must have been perturbed, too, by their lack of creativity in attack, with Louis Saha struggling on his European debut and Paul Scholes uncomfortable on the right flank — the seventh player Ferguson has used this season to fill the void left by David Beckham.
Even their goal owed something to the generosity of the referee, who gave Ryan Giggs the benefit of the doubt when he went down under Jorge Costa’s challenge. Giggs touched the free-kick to Scholes, whose shot came back off Baia and Fortune arrived just in front of Van Nistelrooy to score with an assured finish.
United have scored in 35 of their past 38 Champions League ties and they will have to do so again if they are to stand any chance of reaching the quarterfinals for a ninth successive season. Otherwise their hopes of winning some silverware this season will have to be diverted to the FA Cup, a possibility that Ferguson will not want even to consider. —