Sir Alex Ferguson slammed his team on Tuesday after seeing Manchester United lose 2-1 to Bayern Munich in the Champions League quarter-final first leg and striker Wayne Rooney injured.
“We didn’t play well enough, to be honest. We kept giving the ball away,” said Ferguson after his side conceded an injury-time Ivica Olic goal that evoked memories of the famous 1999 Champions League final between the two.
However, the Scot remained upbeat about the second leg at home next Wednesday,.
“Well, Old Trafford will be a different game obviously,” he said.”We’ll play better and we won’t be giving the ball away the way we did tonight.”
“We’ve got the away goal and that’s an advantage,” he added.
To add injury to insult for the three-time European champions, talismanic striker Rooney limped off the field after giving the visitors the advantage with a left-foot volley with only 66 seconds on the clock.
“He’s got a kick in the ankle, we’ll just have to see tomorrow. Let’s hope it’s not too serious,” said Ferguson, echoing the thoughts of England fans everywhere with just over two months to go until the World Cup in South Africa.
Ferguson said Rooney, who has been in prolific goal-scoring form, netting 34 times this season, “may be doubtful” for Saturday’s top-of-the-table clash with Chelsea in the English Premier League but added: “It’s too early to tell.”
Rooney’s ankle dominated the sports pages in England yesterday.
“Not since Cinderella has so much rested on one foot,” declared the Daily Mail newspaper in a headline that summed up fans fears.
“Pray,” declared the back page of the Sun. “England’s worst nightmare,” the Times said.
Bookmakers William Hill said they had immediately lengthened England’s World Cup odds from 5/1 to 6/1.
“If there is the slightest chance of Rooney being absent it definitely affects England’s chances in the minds of punters,” spokesman Graham Sharpe said.
England coach Fabio Capello, who has already lost former captain David Beckham to an Achilles injury, spoke this week about the importance of Rooney to the England team.
“The other who has been crucial is Rooney because this year he has scored a lot of goals, and he has done so for us as well. He has been very impressive. I hope he maintains this form for South Africa,” he told Spain’s Gol Television.
“There are three players who can make a difference at present,” Capello said. “One is [Cristiano] Ronaldo, the other [Lionel] Messi, and Rooney.”
Summing up the game in Germany, Ferguson said it was “a disappointing performance possession-wise” but handed credit to United’s German opponents who, he said, were the better side.
Goalkeeper Edwin van der Sar, left stranded by a Franck Ribery free kick midway through the second half — which took a deflection off Rooney — and beaten from close range by Olic in the second minute of injury time, paid tribute to Bayern’s “never-say-die” spirit.
“German teams are never beaten until they are on their way to the airport. It’s hard to take,” he said.
For his part, Bayern’s Dutch coach Louis van Gaal said the win was “highly-deserved.”
“We conceded a goal in the first minute that we never should have done,” he said. “That was a shock. We needed 10 minutes to recover from and after that, we were the better team.”
“We have a good chance also in Manchester, because we can always score a goal away from home,” he said.
Bayern will hope to welcome back their own talisman, Dutch winger Arjen Robben, who sat out the clash with United after picking up a calf injury in Saturday’s defeat against Stuttgart.
Belgian defender Daniel van Buyten also stressed the Bayern team’s will to win after a run of poor results that has seen them slip off the top of the Bundesliga.
“Of course, we started the game very badly, but we never gave up hope. We played a full 90 minutes knowing that we could win,” he said.
German international striker Mario Gomez, who came on as a second-half substitute, said the 66,000 fans inside the Allianz Arena had pulled the team through.
“The crowd carried us. I have only very rarely experienced an atmosphere like that in a match,” he said.
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