YOUNG Charlie Sheringham was clutching his dad's mobile
phone and wearing a replica United shirt with Teddy's name
and number on the back. "Come on dad, the coach is about to
go," he called to his father, who was still chatting merrily
into a hedgehog of microphones. David Beckham had just
walked past carrying the enormous European Cup by one handle
as if it were a holdall.
In those delirious moments, Sheringham junior was probably
incapable of appreciating the wider significance of what he
had just seen, though the hug from his father on the team
bus when they finally boarded it will have told him that his
hero was mightily pleased. Charlie is at an age, 11, when
history at school is largely about remembering names and
dates. It will be a challenge to his teachers to find one
that will be more meaningful in this boy's life than May 26,
1999, when he went to Spain and found himself with his
father at the centre of sport's universe.
Barcelona airport the next morning was history with jet-
noise. Dozens of dishevelled United supporters lay on the
cold marble floors unconscious but probably lost in blissful
dreams. It looked like an emergency shelter for flood
victims. A man with a Debonair receipt tried to talk his way
on to a British Airways flight. Penniless acolytes who had
missed charter planes begged foreign airlines to help get
them home. Nobody left Barcelona until they absolutely had
to. In the early hours of yesterday, seasoned football
writers stood by the side of the United coach, not working
any longer but determined to extract every last second of
juice out of a miracle we had actually been paid to see.
There was, as Charlie Sheringham threw an arm round his
father behind the dark glass, a sense that the privilege of
taking part in the 1999 European Cup final extended far
beyond the United players caressing the sort of medals last
worn by Manchester men in 1968. Two magnetic forces held
everybody who had been at the game in place. One was an
awareness that the nature of United's victory made this
probably the most dramatic finish to a major football match
yet seen. The other was the certain knowledge that English
football had not reached such peaks of rapture since
England's World Cup victory in 1966. Who, among archivists
this morning, would dispute that we have just peered in on
the finest achievement in English team sports since Bobby
Moore raised the Jules Rimet trophy 33 summers ago?
It is the tiniest irony that United were not League
champions when they qualified for the European Champion
Clubs' Cup. They squeezed in as runners-up to Arsenal and
had to endure the indignity of pre-tournament qualifying
against LKS Lodz. If a single season is any criterion, they
are the most productive side in the 44-year history of the
European Cup. With 1966 as the starting point, the mind
gropes for a proper sporting context in which to assess the
conquest of three major trophies inside 10 days.
Wednesday night was a feast, the three decades or so that
preceded it only high-grade tapas. Nick Faldo, Lester
Piggott, Seb Coe, Daley Thompson, Nigel Mansell, Ian Botham,
Steve Redgrave: heroes all, but somehow individual
brilliance wilts when set against the collective excellence
of a squad who took a few pulsating seconds in the last-
chance saloon to revive the idea of English football as a
player on the world stage.
The emotional effect of United's manifold triumphs will be
felt when England play Sweden in a crucial European
Championship qualifying game on Saturday week. It will be
felt in the boardrooms of Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool and
Leeds. United have smashed the door down, but is anybody
else from the madcap Premiership capable of running through
the hole?
United's marketing department will conquer fresh lands.
Beckham and Yorke will be proclaimed in a dozen new tongues.
The trouble with setting high standards is that you have to
stick to them. For United themselves there is the daunting
realisation that they will have to keep banging out
blockbusters just as good