Manchester United and their fans should play the final, sing their songs and stand up to the forces of evil
AND so to a cup final which never seemed less important in its outcome, yet one which never seemed more vital in its staging.
Less than 48 hours after Manchester’s darkest night, its gravest atrocity, out will step United, the team who have made the city globally famous for generations.
The team which played on just 13 days after it was devastated by the Munich Air disaster — the team which died in pursuit of the European Cup in 1958, then first won it for England ten years later.
Tonight that team will attempt to win the Europa League, the one trophy missing from an overcrowded cabinet.
As recently as Monday teatime, this seemed like a match of critical importance — the difference between success and failure for boss Jose Mourinho’s maiden Old Trafford campaign.
But now it feels as if it won’t really matter whether United defeat Ajax, whether they reach next season’s Champions League or not.
It merely matters that they will be here, in Stockholm’s Friends Arena, representing a defiant city determined to carry on in the face of indiscriminate violence and unspeakable horror.
The massacre at the Manchester Arena was an attack on pleasure. An attack on entertainment. An attack on escapism.
An attack designed to stop the people of Manchester from going out and having a good time.
An attack on a city’s culture, of which football is an intrinsic part.
This time the murdering b******s came for the little girls with pink balloons at the pop concert. It could have been the boys with red balloons at the cup final.
They devastated a night out attended by Pep Guardiola’s wife and two young daughters — but they could have chosen Guardiola’s own place of work.
The outrage happened where Ariana Grande sang but it was also where Ricky Hatton used to box. For years the arena has been where Mancunians have enjoyed their big nights out.
We’ve known for a long time that they wanted to do this.
We’ve known what the stifling levels of security are about every time we visit Old Trafford.
We’ve known that these lonely, loveless weirdos, with their twisted sense of religion, want to terrorise us as we assemble to experience joy.
They had attacked the gig-goers at the Bataclan theatre in Paris on the same night they tried to blow up the football match at the Stade de France.
The result against Ajax does not seem to matter as much in light of the terror attacksThey targeted music and football — the twin passions of so many millions of ordinary people.
But they did not stop Parisians going out and they won’t frighten Mancunians either. This is the city of Lowry and Corrie, of Bobby and Nobby and pints of Boddies.
Of pie, chips and gravy at Macari’s by the Stretford End. Of lamb bhuna on the Curry Mile in Rusholme.
Of Blue Moon and Wonderwall at the Etihad; Dirty Old Town and This Is The One at Old Trafford.
Hipsters in the Northern Quarter, the gay community out and proud on Canal Street, old ravers who twisted their melons at the Hacienda, after inflating their bananas on the Kippax terrace at Maine Road.
Do they really think they can stop these people from going out?
Do they really think they can stop Mancunians having fun?
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Those from the city which gave us Caroline Aherne and Steve Coogan? Those from the city which adored Georgi Kinkladze and Georgie Best?
Yesterday morning, as they boarded their planes for Sweden, they left behind a city of missing persons and desperate, grief-stricken families but also a city of good samaritans, of kind-hearted volunteers.
Within hours of the attack, Manchester Airport was not a scene of defiance, it was merely a picture of quietly efficient normality.
Three generations of a family of Reds were scoffing down full English breakfasts. A group of Mancunian Asians in United shirts were drinking beer not long after dawn.
They wondered whether Wayne Rooney might feature for one last hurrah, they read about Antoine Griezmann possibly arriving from Atletico Madrid.
On the plane they sang their usual rude songs about City and Scousers. They drank and they laughed raucously.
This could have seemed inappropriate but it didn’t feel that way — it felt right.
United sometimes get mocked for the far-flung nature of their support. Yesterday this felt unifying and reassuring. Football brings people together.
Paul Pogba, the world’s most expensive footballer, is a Muslim, as it happens, and Marouane Fellaini is too.
But no one mentions it because religion isn’t relevant at the football.
And that is how we’d like it to stay.
It was a pity United cancelled last night’s scheduled pre-match press conference.
It was an error of judgment, understandable at a time of such incalculable grief, but not in keeping with the city’s desire to carry on regardless.
When United face a youthful Ajax tonight — on their return to a grand European stage after a lengthy absence — it is to be hoped that Mourinho’s men can entertain like the great Alex Ferguson teams.
And it is hoped that local lads such as Marcus Rashford and Jesse Lingard can show off the best of a city which is distraught yet unbowed.
It is to be hoped that the boys of Manchester will play their football and sing their songs.
Because that is precisely what the forces of evil want to stop them from doing.
And that is why the game matters, even when it feels like the result no longer does.
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