For 70 minutes it looked like a perfect Europa League night for Manchester United, but a harsh penalty allowed Real Sociedad back into the last-16 tie, which ended 1-1 and with manager Ruben Amorim in introspective mood.
The Portuguese was in no doubt that the penalty, awarded after a VAR review, was the turning point in the contest but cited exhaustion rather than officiating as the deciding factor.
Speaking to TNT Sport after the game, he said: “I felt until the penalty we had the control of the game, and then I think the penalty changed a little bit the momentum. I felt our team in the last 30 minutes were really really tired, and you can feel that in the game.”
There is everything to play for in the second leg of the tie, which takes place next week at Old Trafford. Amorim warned: “It’s going to be a different game, the pressure is going to be on us in that stadium and we have to be ready. I think the key will be surviving physically to Sunday and to be ready and fresh for Thursday.”
When asked what changed in the last half hour, he quickly responded that it was “clearly fatigue.” He added: “We were late on the balls, even in transitions you feel that the pace was different and they were stronger in that 30 minutes.”
The United boss opted to start Alejandro Garnacho on the right rather than his usual position on the left, a decision which was met with raised eyebrows but ultimately yielded a goal when the young Argentine cut in from the right to tee up Joshua Zirkzee.
On why he switched Garnacho to the opposite flank, he explained: “We look at the opponents, the way they try to press, where is the space, which player is going to follow the run, and we tried to imagine the right characteristics for that game.
“We tried to change different things, to expose the opponent to different things.” His analysis clearly worked very well, and tonight saw his players operating with a little more freedom, although he identified decision-making as an area for improvement.
He said: “Our decision in the last third is sometimes not the better decision, but we had good moments in the game.”
When pressed on a moment in the first half when Diogo Dalot missed the chance to ping a simple cross to Rasmus Hojlund, the manager said: “[Dalot] has the advantage and Rasmus did the sprint to win the position but that can happen, they cannot focus on that, they have to move on to the next play and we move on to the next game.”
That comes on Sunday in a Premier League crunch match against in-form Arsenal.
Featured image Juan Manuel Serrano Arce via Getty Images
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Joe Ponting
Joe has spent more than half his life writing about football and all of it following United. As a child he told a doctor his name was ‘Paul Scholes’, but could never pick a pass like him no matter how much he tried.
