Manchester, March 16 / Us /: Expensive average confirmation: Cup drought in Manchester United completes the fifth season.
The last streak to winning the title ended at Old Trafford now used to disappointment as United were knocked out of the Champions League in a 1-0 loss to Atletico Madrid, The Associated Press reported.
In a tight and tense match, Renan Lodi made the difference by scoring his first goal in the competition in his twenty-fifth appearance, meeting Antoine Griezmann’s cross with a header after leaving defender Diogo Dalot unchecked at the far post in the 41st minute.
“I wasn’t playing a few months ago, but now everything has changed and I’m very happy with that,” said 23-year-old left-back Lodi. “It’s a tough role. I’m working on it, and I’m learning.”
Often, the lifeguard of the team, David de Gea, was beaten. The goalkeeper is feeling the pain the most, being the only player still on the squad since the end of Alex Ferguson’s trophy-laden era in 2013.
“Of course, that’s not good enough,” De Gea said. “It is difficult for the club, for us and for the fans. That is where we are now. It is a difficult situation, but we have to keep fighting.”
Cristiano Ronaldo left Old Trafford just before Ferguson retired and he was starting to get upset. The 37-year-old is back this season – after winning titles at Real Madrid and Juventus – to make the difference.
Instead of dazzling, as he did with Saturday’s hat-trick against Tottenham, Ronaldo didn’t manage a single shot against the Spanish champions.
Instead, United were left dependent on defender Raphael Varane who attempted a second-half equalizer, with Jan Oblak clearing his head. United could not get past the goalkeeper three weeks after a 1-1 draw in Madrid that counted as away goals no longer held an advantage.
“For me, Oblak is the best goalkeeper in the world,” Atletico captain Koke said. “He showed it again tonight.”
Atlético showed their blueprint for the win, scoring from one of only three shots on target.
“We struggled when we had to, and we shot when we had the chance here in a great stadium, against a great team,” said Rodrigo de Paul, whose long-range shot was saved by De Gea in the first half.
Diego Simeone, two-time Champions League runner-up, leads Atletico again to the quarter-finals as in 2020. Europe is the platform for Atletico to rise this season, as the team cling to fourth place domestically after winning the title last season.
“We wanted to show tonight that we are a very difficult team to play against,” Griezmann said. “We wanted to be at that level more consistently and move forward.”
United are falling far behind, having appeared only twice in the Champions League quarter-finals in a decade, in 2014 and 2019.
Since the 1970s, United have not gone that long without winning the second tier of European football in 2017, the last homage, at least historically, to the most successful English football club.
There’s not much to show for the more than $1 billion in transfer spending since the two-time Champions League winner Ferguson retired as coach nine years ago.
Such is United’s instability that it was interim coach Ralf Rangnick who oversaw United’s exit from the FA Cup and Champions League in early 2022.
The German, who led Schalke to the Champions League semi-finals in 2011, said: “The second half was difficult. I don’t think the match lasted more than three minutes, it was always choppy, there was always someone lying on the floor.
“There were also some intriguing refereeing decisions. I wouldn’t say they were decisive, but at least he fell for those peculiar time-wasting behaviours, and in the end, four minutes of extra time was a joke to me.”
Now the priority is just to reclaim fourth place in the Premier League to return to the Champions League next season for whoever takes charge of United.
A possible successor to Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, who sacked United in December, is Erik ten Hag, whose side Ajax was also eliminated in the second leg of the Round of 16 on Tuesday. Darwin Nunez’s goal gave Benfica a 1-0 win in Amsterdam to go up 3-2 on aggregate.