As former boxer Mike Tyson says, everyone has a perfect strategy to win until they get the first punch in the mouth. Undoubtedly, Erik ten Hag, the Manchester United manager, had it, but the red devils conceded a direct blow to the jaw after twelve seconds of the game -yes, twelve seconds!-, the fastest goal in the entire history of the finals of the FA Cup. The dream of the treble can come true for Guardiola and his team next Saturday in Istanbul against Inter.
It was seen and not seen. The time it took for the ball to go from the center kick to goalkeeper Ortega, a kick to the opposite field, a disputed ball in the air that Haland won, and an impressive volley from Gundogan that left De Gea as one of the statues of the Museum of Wax. Wax or stone, but absolutely immovable. For half an hour there was only one team on the field, and Manchester City were able to deliver the coup de grace with a header from Rodri just four minutes after it skimmed the post, and shots from the Norwegian and Belgian de Bruyne that went high.
But United, who seemed close to knockout, got up from the canvas in the 33rd minute, without having done much to deserve it, thanks to luck and the intervention of VAR, in one of those modern penalties in which the ball brushes against the hand and that neither the referee nor the linesman had considered foul. It was a cross from Wan-Bissaka, in a play without much of an appearance of danger, that he bounced off Grealish as he jumped with his arms separated from his body, and ended up as maximum punishment. Bruno Fernandes executed it with all the coldness in the world and 1-1 on the scoreboard, oddly enough.
The league champions suffered the blow, and Varane had a good chance to put United ahead with a shot from the edge of the small area that he miscontrolled and went over the crossbar. And from there to rest.
Only six minutes of the continuation had elapsed when Gundogan did his thing again, this time in a blackboard play. Corner kick, the attackers drag the defenders to the right, but the ball goes to the left front of the area, where the German volleys again, this time not as majestic and clean as the first, but enough to slip together to the post without De Gea being able to do much.
The rest of the game was more exchange of blows, with a great save from the Spanish goalkeeper to Haland, a shot that was too high from Rashford after a good combination of his own, and a goal to Gundogan justly disallowed for offside that would have meant his hat trick. The entrance of Alejandro Garnacho gave vitality to United’s attacks, which launched several bursts of artillery and was about to be rewarded already in discount, when in a racket the ball hit the top of the crossbar, and a subsequent header from McTominay was deflected to a corner by Rodri. They were two of the only three shots between the sticks of the Red Devils in the entire match.
United fans would have wanted nothing so much as to deny their eternal rival the possibility of reissuing the League-Cup-Champions triplet that their team achieved in 1999. Only one more obstacle -the Internazionale- separates Pep and his team from absolute glory .
