Sporting contests to remember: Season of the Treble (1998-99)
Can Manchester United score, they always score… (pause) & Solskjaer has won it!
If you’re a supporter of Manchester United, these words will continue bringing a smile on your face till your last breath. If you’re not, you will continue nodding your head in sheer disbelief at the turn of events on the evening of 26.5.99 at the Camp Nou stadium in Barcelona. For a change, an English team had the rub of the green and got the better of its German counterparts. Bayern Munich was dealt with the cruelest of defeats. With the 2-1 scoreline and subsequently being crowned the ‘Champions of Europe’, Manchester United achieved something which no English team had accomplished till then and hasn’t accomplished since: THE TREBLE.
For everyone’s clarification, ‘Treble’ is a term used in football when a football team wins the three major trophies in a single season, i.e. the top tier league and the two cup competitions. It is interesting to note that only 6 teams (including this one) have scaled this Everest since the inception of the sport in the 19th century.
Arsenal (their biggest rival then) had achieved the domestic double, leaving Manchester United empty-handed after the 1997-98 season. For a club that hates to lose, this was a big disappointment and a fitting reply was expected…and reply they did!
The foundation for this unprecedented success was laid even before a football was kicked, with Sir Alex Ferguson (who was just Alex Ferguson back then) bringing in some much needed fresh blood and getting rid of some old servants. In came Jaap Stam (for a then world record fee for a defender, £10.75 million) for the outgoing Gary Pallister. In came striker Dwight Yorke (who many thought was overvalued at £12.6 million), whose blossoming partnership with Andy Cole was one of the crucial reasons for United’s on-field achievements that season.
If one had to use only one word to encapsulate the entire 1998-99 season for Manchester United, it would be ‘drama’. United are famous for their late comebacks, their never-say-die attitude and this season epitomized that to the full. In fact, the first game of their Premiership season (a hard fought 2-2 draw with Leicester City, with Beckham equalizing at the end with his trademark free-kick) set the tone for the rest of the season. The 1998-99 season consisted of many such fightbacks and come-from-behind victories, where United (sometimes undeservingly) would snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Be it the Premier League, the FA Cup or the UEFA Champions League, one could never count Manchester United out till the final whistle was blown.
Who can forget the victory over Liverpool in the 4th round of the FA cup (down 1-0 until the 88th minute, Manchester United turned it around with 2 goals in 3 minutes), or the victory over Arsenal in the semi-final of the same competition. Forced to play with 10 men for the last 30 minutes of normal time and extra time thereafter after their captain Roy Keane received his 2nd yellow card of the match, it took a moment of genius from one of the finest footballers of all time, Ryan Giggs, to win it for United (ask any Arsenal fan and he’ll remember Giggs’ “bare-chested, shirt twirling” celebration till date). It is widely considered to be one of the finest goals to be ever scored in modern-day football.
The team had their fair share of dramatic moments in the Champions League as well. After a 1-1 draw against Juventus at home in the 1st leg of the semi-final, United needed either a scored draw of 2-2 or above or a win; they had never won on Italian soil before. Expecting any away team to score 2 or more goals against a Juventus team containing the likes of Zidane, Inzaghi, Del Piero, Henry and Conte was a mean feat in itself, and Manchester United’s history further compounded their hurdles. But Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Captain Roy Keane turned in an inspirational performance (which would later go on to define his time at Manchester United), leading the fight-back after United went down 2-0. Not only did United qualify for the final of the tournament, they also beat one of the finest Juventus teams of all time and grabbed their first win on Italian soil with a 3-2 score-line. The rest, as they say, is history. Manchester United scored two stoppage time goals in the final against Bayern Munich to break German hearts and in the process, etched their names into European history. Till date, it is remembered as one of the most memorable European Cup finals of all time.
The 1998-99 season has proved to be the cornerstone for many of Manchester United’s successes since, both on the field and commercially. Alex Ferguson became ‘Sir Alex Ferguson’ and the team has since become a part of Manchester United folklore. Manchester United were globally the richest football club for 5 years after that, and presently is the 3rd richest football club (it still has the highest revenue among English football clubs though).
What is particularly heart-warming about the achievements of the team of 1998-99 is the fact that different players delivered at different points in time. It wasn’t always the same players bailing the team out of trouble, and more often than not, it was the ‘Class of 92’ (David Beckham, Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes, Gary Neville, Phil Neville, and Nicky Butt), also referred to as Fergie’s Fledglings, who did the needful. Add to it the skills of Roy Keane, Jaap Stam, Peter Schmeichel, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, Dwight Yorke, Andy Cole, Teddy Sheringham, and what you got is a squad teeming with quality and champions. They’ve firmly entrenched their places in footballing folklore and broke records in style.
The present Manchester United squad is quite similar to the squad of ’99 in many aspects (4 strikers and healthy presence of youth academy products). Like that team, they’re still gunning on all fronts (they’re top of the league, and still a part of the FA Cup and the Champions League) and the dream of a Treble is very much on. But irrespective of the squad’s achievements this season, the team of ’99 have cemented their status in the upper echelons of footballing history, and will forever retain a special place in every Manchester United supporter’s heart.