New wine in the old bottles: Manchester United vs Madrid Preview

Whatever the outcome, Sir Alex Ferguson is going to be wining and dining on the finest food and drink money can buy after tonight’s game. Jose Mourinho holds the man he calls 'the Boss' in an unswerving high esteem, and the pair have traditionally shared a post-match Port ever since the Special One’s Stamford Bridge days in the mid noughties. On the pitch, however, fans can expect to see a football that falls into a new vintage – one that owes nothing to the past. Manchester United take on Real Madrid at the Santiago Bernabeu tonight in a ‘clash-of-the-cash’ that seems certain to get the LED screens humming from here to Hong Kong. The stadiums are the same, the kits have hardly altered, but the modern Manchester and Madrid teams look set to offer up a game shorn entirely of throw-backs to ‘the good-old days’. Ladies and gents, we’re now in store for something completely different.   

It’s more than a decade since two of the world’s most famous footballing outfits last met in the Champions League.  The philosophy and personnel of both clubs have been through evolution and revolution in the intervening years, and the United and Madrid teams will shape up as very different entities than those that walked out in 2003. Back then, the self-styled galácticos had brought (or bought) in a style of football that belonged on a different planet - Carlos, Figo and Zidane were all still strutting their stuff for a Madrid side who had lifted the Champions League trophy three times in the previous five years, and who stilled ruled supreme in Spain. On the night, the original Ronaldo (still something a little bit special in the days before the burger belly kicked) in smashed in a stunning hat-trick that flattened United’s hopes of making the final and sent the madridistas through to the semis. To put things even better in perspective, Golden Balls had yet to pack his bags for Spain after ‘Bootgate’, and Wes Brown was still starting for the United defence. Even more incredibly, so was John O’Shea. Funny old thing, history.

Back to the future, then. The Red Devils are set up nicely for an all-out assault on the European title; bouncing off the back of a domestic season that has just started to turn a little sour for Anyone But United fans up and down the country. United are sitting 12 points clear at the top of the table, and you’d have to have been camped beneath a pretty sizeable rock not to have felt United’s stranglehold tightening on the Premier League over the last few months.  Week by miserable week, Fergie’s crooked fingers have been unfurling wickedly around the PL trophy, and, despite increasingly muted criticism of their playing style there’s little doubt United are doing the business - even if they’re not quite looking it. Madrid, on the other hand, have slipped behind Barcelona by the same margin, flagging 12 point off the pace in Spain’s La Liga. And yet most pundits have been steadfast in handing the edge to Real in the weeks of match-build up: the BBC’s Ben Smith called it ‘advantage Madrid’ across the field, giving the Spanish giants the nod in terms of squad depth, managerial nous and team tactics – the kind of factors that are likely to turn a two legged tie. How does this set the EPL up against La Liga? The feedback from the hacks ain’t too promising. With United running away with the home front, and an exceptional Madrid team looking shaky at home , the pro-Real brigade have seemingly recognised the Premier League as a fading force  in continental football – admittedly, the glory days at the end of the last decade when Liverpool, United, Chelsea and Arsenal regularly made the last four seem a whole world away from the modern malaise. Standards seem to have slipped for Team England.

United go out tonight beating the drum for the British boys (Celtic look dead and buried, although Arsenal are still in with a shout – they take on last year’s finalists Bayern next Tuesday). And the omens are not all doom and gloom. Regardless of press pessimism, there’s no doubt the Red Devils have got their tails up: unbeaten in 14 games, with the pace, power and precision afforded by Welbeck, Rooney, Carrick and Van Persie, United have the firepower to make this tie their own. Does this make them favourites? No, not by a longshot – any team containing Christian Ronaldo, a player Gary Neville recently described a ‘bully’ and a ‘monster’ is sure to create its own nightmares for the opposition defence. Moreover, this is a more pragmatic Madrid under Mourinho, a man who has brought home result after result over his glittering managerial career. Nevertheless, in United and Real, the UCL is expected to serve up a tie that will make the mouth water. Ferguson has described the match as 'an acid test' of his side's credentials. Here's hoping the teams don't let us down. A bitter aftertaste wouldn't go down well with Mourinho or Fergie. It won't go down well with the watching world.