A Game That Matters, Even if Title Is Already Decided

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/10/sports/soccer/10iht-soccer10.html

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LONDON — You need to have lived in Manchester to feel the effect when United plays City. It builds up for weeks, it is over in a night, but it gets into every factory, every office, every classroom.

The Mancunian derby on Monday meant more than a game. This not-so-neighborly rivalry has been handed down over the generations, and it has remained intense even when the disparity between the clubs was large. Imagine what it is like when England’s league title hangs upon it.

City won Monday’s contest, 2-1, on United’s turf. The victory will not change the outcome of the Premier League championship because, short of an unprecedented collapse over the last seven games this season, United has built up an unassailable lead in the tournament.

The Citizens won the battle of Old Trafford, but their team, City, expects to lose the title that was stolen from United with the last kick of last season.

That will not — for this week, at least — stop City supporters from enjoying the bragging rights. It will not diminish the fact that Sergio Agüero came off the bench Monday to strike a wonderful goal that in itself deserved to win the game.

And there’s the thing. Agüero is from Argentina. He plays in England for the money. City is bankrolled from Abu Dhabi, United is run by Americans, and two-thirds of the players on the field Monday night were foreigners who are passing through.

Why would English intercity tribalism affect them? Again, you would have to have been in Manchester to experience the way that pulses quicken at the very mention of this meeting, which dates back longer than any supporter has lived. You can see it in people’s faces, sense it from the way that men and boys, and women too, walk with a different step when the pale blue Manchester team has beaten the Red Devils in their own stadium.

Let me attempt to convey Agüero’s part in all this. He is 24, and, if the financial rewards could be equal, he would doubtless prefer to play in Argentina. He is separated from his wife, Giannina Maradona, and their four-year-old son Benjamin, who returned home to Buenos Aires to be with Diego Maradona, the child’s grandfather, at the start of this year.

And though physical injuries explain why Agüero has played fewer games and score fewer goals this season than last, his mental state surely weighs on his soul.

His loss of fitness and form made him sit out the first 70 minutes of the derby. But boy, did he respond after coming in.

Agüero’s replacement of the enigmatic French player Samir Nasri was a no-brainer. Agüero has more ability, more desire and a knack for scoring precious goals, like the one that won the Premier League title with the very last kick of the 2012 season.

His ability and his desire were afire again on Monday when he struck seven minutes after coming in to play. There appeared to be no opening for him when he received the ball toward the left side of United’s penalty box. He was opposed by Danny Welbeck, running from his right, and Phil Jones, facing him from the other side.

The size and strength of the two dwarf that of the Argentine. But he had the ball, he had the momentum and he knew where he was going. Once his scampering, quick steps took him inside the box, they dared not tackle him, and just as he seemed to be running, and stumbling, away from the goal, he tenaciously decided to shoot.

With his right foot — not his best — he chipped the ball into the top corner of the near post. United goalie David De Gea got a glove to it, but could not prevent it from crossing his line.

The winner in a ferociously fought game, it was the only “clean” goal of the three because the other two goals were effectively own goals. First, City took the lead when Ryan Giggs, of all people, indulgently attempted a back-heeled pass that led to James Milner shooting seven minutes after halftime.

The flight of the ball deviated off the body of Jones, and the score should have been annulled anyway because two City players, Carlos Tévez and David Silva, were between the last United defender and the goal. The law in soccer talks of “passive” offside, leaving it to the referee and linesman to determine whether or not a player who is technically offside is “interfering with play.”

It is nonsense. If Tévez, standing directly in line between the shot and the goalkeeper, was not interfering with play, what was he doing there?

No matter. United’s equalizer also had a stroke of luck in that Jones’s header was going wide until it cannoned into the goal off the shoulder blades of City defender Vincent Kompany.

All of the postgame debate counts for nothing. The derby is done, but United still leads by 12 points, and even if City wins every game from now to the end of the season, United would only need three victories and a draw out of its remaining seven to be champion.

Where has it been won and lost this season, if City is the equal of United on the field? Through the management of United’s veteran Alex Ferguson.

He has wrung consistency out of every player in a way that City did not match.

This relentless pursuit of the title, and the combative nature that prevails in England, has repercussions.

No English side reached the final eight in the Champions League this spring. Maybe they are too caught up in the internecine business of winning the tribal contests on their doorstep.