One nice day long long time ago, I came home with my daughter from a nice little walk (she was 10 months old) fed her, put her to bed, she fell asleep, left her to sleep and went to talk to my parents and have a dinner. As I was passing by living room my dad calls me and says: "come watch football with your old man", I asked him who is playing, he said Bayern and Manchester. Yes that game. I started singing "Manchester, England, England", from a movie Hair, that I sang quite often, he said "yes they are from England". I had no idea about any of the clubs cause I was basketball fan at the time, trained it as well, and started watching football only less then a year before, WC 1998 in France, (Croatia won bronze medal) when I had to lie down in the 9th month of pregnancy, because of my troubles, so I watched every single game that WC. So I said to my dad: ok, who are we cheering for, he said Manchester. He was not big fan of German people on a count his dad was killed by nazi in front of him and his brother and sister. Knowing that I said I will cheer for Bayern, just to have a bit of fun with my old man, as the game went on he was more annoyed with result and the game, talking about this team from Manchester and this Ferguson guy that I spent half of the game trying to find which player has that last name on his back. Good days. 20 minutes before the end I told him I will now cheer for his team and "we" will win. He replied "about time". 10 mins before the end he was so nervous and decided to go to balcony for a cigaret, or two and told me to call him when "we" score. I did. He runs back with a cigaret in his hand (mom was not happy about that) and both hands in the air "yeeeees, one more". I laughed. He went back to balcony. I stopped laughing. "Dad", I shouted, not believeing what just happened, "they scored again" he runs back saying "you are kidding", hears croatian commentator screaming and shoutin, looks at TV and sees bunch of grown up men jumping on one of them. Starts jumping as well, cigaret ash falls on the carpet, (mom was not happy about that either) and shouts: "oh my God, Ferguson did it" I told him Ferguson did not score, it was some guy who came on the pitch not long ago. He looked at me, starts laughing and says: "Ferguson is coach"! How was I supposed to know that?
Anyway, still remember the shock I was in, scoring 2 goals in such a short period, never seen that before (not that I've seen many games up until then) and that was it for me. Funny how I remember that day like it was yesterday.
And I still sing that song very often, now I know why.
In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik and Imran hold a long overdue conversation about United's awful league form with 1 win in 7. They discuss a disappointing draw at Bournemouth, a not so disappointing draw against Liverpool and a crushing defeat at Chelsea - Is time nearly over for Erik Ten Hag?