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It was in September 2009, only a year after Abu Dhabi’s purchase of Manchester City, that English football’s most listened to and revered voice offered an opinion on the future of the game in his adopted town.
Sitting behind a desk in Manchester United’s academy building, beneath photographs of the players who had helped him construct his empire, Sir Alex Ferguson was asked whether City would ever come to dominate, whether his own club would ever face their neighbours as underdogs.
‘Not in my lifetime,’ Ferguson replied, with face as straight as Deansgate.
Back then, United and City literally sat side by side, their training grounds jostling for space at Carrington, a vast swathe of land sitting just off the M60 motorway to the south-west of Manchester. As Ferguson spoke that day, City’s players could almost have heard the dismissiveness of his tone over the fence.
Now City reside in their expansive footballing palace on the other side of town, a temple built by Abu Dhabi money and testimony to not only a shift in the balance of power that was to come much more quickly than even Ferguson ever suspected but also their current and established standing as English football’s dominant force.
Manchester United are defending the treble and the heroes of the famous 1999 triumph
Having already won the Premier League, Man City could emulate United's Treble success
Alex Ferguson couldn't predict what would happen to United's city rivals back in 2009
United may privately question the legitimacy of the investment on which City’s modern success has been built but the thing that really makes them seethe is the steady accumulation of trophies that has gradually turned Manchester from red to blue. Seven Premier League titles, two FA Cups, six League Cups.
It turns out Ferguson was in denial all those years ago. Two days after he spoke, United edged City 4-3 at Old Trafford in a thrilling derby game. But City were coming and deep down he knew it.
Now, thirteen-and-a-half years later, Pep Guardiola’s team stand on the threshold of crashing through the last remaining barrier, of destroying the uniqueness of one of the achievements their great rivals have always held most dear.
Along with the lifting of the 1968 European Cup, a decade after the Munich disaster, nothing defines United quite like Ferguson’s 1999 treble of league, FA Cup and Champions League.
But City already have this season’s Premier League, their fifth in six seasons, and it is presumed – rightly or wrongly – they will beat Inter Milan – Italy’s third-best team – in next Saturday’s European final in Istanbul. And that brings us to today, the first ever all-Manchester FA Cup final, a game that may one day be viewed as pivotal in terms of how we view one of football’s most enduring rivalries.
If United under Ferguson was all about the winning, today is different. United already have twelve FA Cups. This, strangely, feels as though it is about stopping City winning. Today United’s players are more than footballers in this story. They are charged with trying to repel City’s assault on their own club’s unique legacy. They are, as grand as it sounds, the only ones who can protect and enshrine United’s place in English football history.
This Thursday, about 300 yards away from where Ferguson spoke that day in 2009, a slight, unremarkable looking Dutch coach sat in a different building and addressed the challenging notion of how to stop a juggernaut.
Erik ten Hag’s introduction to the might of Manchester City was brutal. When his United team faced them at the Etihad Stadium last October, they lost 6-3 on a Sunday afternoon when the score line was actually generous to the losers.
Erik ten Hag is charged with both winning the cup and preventing Man City's treble charge
Manchester United were humbled by their rivals in the first meeting this season, losing 6-3
Ten Hag, 53, has little of Ferguson’s aura, none of his abrasive machismo. But, different to the four full-time United managers that separate his United time from Ferguson’s, he already has behind him a body of work at Old Trafford that points to a possible return to relevance and genuine standing. That day at City was sobering and there have been others. 7-0 at Liverpool, for example. Weaknesses and frailties remain.
In old United money, a third placed Premier League finish and a League Cup win would not have counted for much. However, the ten years since Ferguson stood aside have been so fallow, so desperately ugly, that an FA Cup victory this afternoon would add to the growing feeling that Ten Hag’s presence at England’s biggest football club may yet transpire to be genuinely transformative.
Ten Hag’s English is not yet perfect and he is not a natural orator, neither in his own language or his adopted one. On Thursday, though, he was clear that he would not play to the theme of the day. This is not about Manchester City, he said.
‘We want to win a cup,’ said Ten Hag.
‘It is not about stopping City, it is about trying to win the cup against a great opponent.
‘Extra motivation is not necessary. It will not give more motivation for the team because their motivation is already enough. It can’t be more.
‘They want to win a cup and they have an opportunity. They want to set a crown on the season so what do you need more? What is
