I’ll be repeating this till I die, but there was an ocean of difference between 2009 and 2011. In 2008 we were the worlds best team by margins IMO. In 2009 we were almost as good. In 2011 we were a completely different kettle of fish. Barca was a struggling team able to be good in 2008, in 2009 they were a brilliant and reinvigorated team, in 2011 they were the worlds best by margins, maybe the best ever.
I’ve seen the 2009 final three times now. I remember the deflated feeling of helplessness after the game. But feelings aren’t descriptions of facts, nor very accurate. At the time, there was also the newness of tikitaka making me (and most commentators) believe that extreme possession was dominance in itself. Now we know it’s just a strategy, you can have 70 % possesion and be a well deserved loser.
Looking at the 2009 final again, showed me that it was a contained game between two tactically accomplished teams, with different phases to the game, and where United created somewhat more dangerous situations than Barca. United started the game better, creating unbalance in a Barca team that didn’t manage to play the way we have been used to see them. Eto’o’s brilliant goal on an uncharacterisitcally inalert VDS came against play, and was not a typical Barca goal. After that there were phases of Barca having much possesion and United looking for direct openings, but we in fact struggled more to contain them in 2008, and created more openings as well. The difference was that in 2008, Scholes put us ahead with a fantastic strike from an uncharacteristacal defensive error from Zambrotta, whereas none of the shots in 2009 clicked like that. Instead, Messi, again uncharacteristically, scored on a header that was probably one of his best headers in his carreer up to that point. It was again not a result of Barca dominance, but of openings at the back of a team needing ti get forward.
Goals decide games, but goals also colours games, and the combination of those colours, and the then trending overestimation of possession as dominance in itself, created a feeling, yes, and a collective storytelling that Barca had ‘outplayed’ us and similar notions. Also in me. But looking coldly and analytically at the game will tell how United did enough tactically to win that final, but the wonderstrikes were with Eto’o and Xavi/Messi that night, and not with Ronaldo, Berbatov or Rooney whom we know were well capable of such moments of magic.
In 2011, we were chanceless.