A football match lasts much longer than 90 minutes. It begins before the first whistle and continues beyond the final whistle. Every game has a back-story and a front-story, and matches exist in what the academic film critic Stephen Heath called an ‘englobingly extensive prolongation’. Few have had such an extensive prolongation as the immense Champions League quarter-final between Real Madrid and Manchester United in 2000 when Real, having drawn the first leg 0-0, won 3-2 at Old Trafford in a game notable for the staggering quality its of attacking play and a famous tactical switch from Vicente del Bosque.
In a sense the tie began 40 years earlier, when a teenage Alex Ferguson sneaked into Hampden Park and was spellbound by Madrid’s 7-3 evisceration of Eintracht Frankfurt in the European Cup final. And it continued to reverberate until Ferguson’s last Champions League game against, yep, Madrid in 2013. Every time United lined up for a big game at home or in Europe under Ferguson, their tactics were a direct consequence of that chastening experience against Madrid. Del Bosque spoke of United’s 'tactical anarchy' that night, and Ferguson ensured such suggestions could never be made again. Until that game his teams tried to score one more than the opposition; afterwards they tried to concede one fewer.
Real’s win ended United’s reign as European champions, at a time when many felt Ferguson’s young side were going to establish a dynasty, and instantly restored their own faded glamour. It also changed Del Bosque’s life. Until then he had been Real’s odd-job man, almost a Spanish Tony Parkes, but that match set him on the road to becoming one of the most successful coaches of the early 21st century. All of that, and Ferguson’s tactical epiphany, mean that this was arguably the most epochal European match since Heysel, although for very different reasons. Del Bosque's tactical brainwave caused shockwaves that changed the landscape of modern football.
