Chapter Forty-Six: The Arrogance of the FA

I hate international breaks!

After seeing the injury report submitted by his assistant, Ancelotti groaned in pain and rubbed his forehead, which was still aching, with his thumb.

After the last international break, Manchester United's injury list is in the red.

Mata.... Sprained ankle and is expected to miss at least a week....

Di Maria... Left thigh adductor strain... Not a month got better...

Fellaini.... Knee injury .... Expected to take two weeks...

Hummels.... Calf muscle strain.... Absent for at least four weeks!

Four absolute main players were injured all of a sudden, which made Ancelotti want to scold his mother.

Fortunately, on the injury list, Ancelotti did not see Li Qingshan's name, otherwise, in the upcoming Manchester derby, Ancelotti even wanted to raise the white flag and surrender.....

In addition to the injured soldiers, Ancelotti also has the question of fixtures in front of him.

On September 10, Manchester United will face city rivals Manchester City at Old Trafford!

Prior to that, most of United's main players were required to play for the national team.

After playing for South Korea on September 6, Lee returned to Manchester on September 8 due to jet lag, leaving only two days to go before the derby.

Valencia and Sandro, who were also playing in South America, also took a long-distance flight and returned to Manchester on the evening of September 8.

Of course, most of the main players on Manchester City's side are also members of the national team, and everyone has not taken advantage of this aspect.

What is making Ancelotti want to scold his mother is that after the Manchester derby on September 10, the Champions League will be played on September 13 - Manchester United needs to travel to Belgium to challenge Club Brugge away!

Even if Manchester United didn't suffer this wave of injuries, such a schedule would have made Ancelotti very crazy.

Playing a costly derby and then going away from home, without even having time to prepare, it was a tough Champions League away game – Carlo Ancelotti doesn't think the Belgian giants are easy teams to deal with, especially when Manchester United are tired and away from home, and it's not easy to eat the opponent in one bite.

In fact, even before the start of the season, Manchester United applied to the FA to change the schedule, after all, such a schedule is too difficult for Manchester United to deal with.

Normally, players need at least three days to recuperate after a game, and modern football is becoming more physically demanding, which makes players increasingly unable to cope with the busy schedule. To give a simple example, just fifteen years ago, when in the five major European leagues, the average distance of a player in a football match was about six kilometers, and in today's games, it is very common for a player to run more than ten kilometers in a game, and now a football game has an average running distance of more than eight kilometers!

In addition to the development of football tactics, there is also the keeping up of sports science and nutrition science, so that the athletes' physique has improved greatly compared with the average of more than ten years ago.

But even if you improve, the player is still a human being, and when you run 10 kilometers, the lactic acid accumulation in the whole body has reached a certain amount, and if you don't rest and adjust, you will immediately devote yourself to another game, which is too demanding for the player's body.

However, the FA ignored United's application.

Compared to the football associations of other European countries, the FA can be described as a representative of conservative, stubborn and arrogant. Especially when it comes to supporting Champions League teams, the FA has often played a role of delay, for example, arranging a rivalry between rivals before a Champions League game.....

Adjusting the league schedule for teams competing in the Champions League and Europa League is nothing new in other European leagues. Other top European leagues will adjust their Champions League fixtures to help their teams perform well in the Champions League.

However, the FA seems to be particularly reluctant to see Champions League teams, and the Champions League is particularly fond of adding tough battles to the participating teams in the interval between games, and the civil war consumes too much energy, which often leads to dismal European results for Premier League teams.

Speaking of which, the FA's history of not waiting to see the Champions League has gone a long time.

At the beginning of 1955, when the Champions League was in its infancy, the French professional sports media "La Liga" selected 18 clubs from all over Europe to participate, of which the only representative of England was Chelsea. Because in the 1954-1955 season, they won the English Football League One (the predecessor of the Premier League) for the first time.

Chelsea, of course, were happy and quickly accepted the offer. However, the FA did not let it go.

In the 1950s, English teams generally chose to rest on their laurels. Few clubs in those days would have looked beyond the league. Many teams, including the FA, will think that the league is everything and the league title is everything. Therefore, they are dismissive of external exchanges and foreign conquests.

Chelsea did not "tsundere", but chose to be a good boy, honestly listened to the FA's "advice", and gave up qualifying. Subsequently, the team "Warsaw Defenders" from Poland took the place.

A year later, the league title changed hands and United qualified for the Champions League. A year can change a lot of things, but it can't change the FA's stinky face.

Thankfully, then-Manchester United manager Busby was "born proud". He defended the FA's ban and led the Red Devils to Europe even if he lost his FA Cup qualification.

At the time, the FA even threatened to impose harsher penalties on Manchester United, withdrawing their league points. However, in the end, under the joint protest of the club and the competition committee, he survived. The result of the-for-tat between Manchester United and the FA was that the FA made a fuss about Manchester United's league schedule in the following season, making it difficult for them to juggle it.

Manchester United's first opponent in the Champions League in history was the Belgian giants Anderlecht, when Manchester United's home game was borrowed from Manchester City's Maine Road Stadium, in this stadium, Manchester United won the first Champions League game 2-0, and then on the road, Manchester United even used a score of 10-0 to make the Belgian giants a full 12 times in two legs!

Later, Manchester United eliminated Borussia Dortmund and Athletic Bilbao to advance to the last four, losing to current champions Real Madrid in the semi-finals. The European debut is not amazing, but it can be regarded as a long face for English football.

However, this has not helped, the FA's attitude towards the Champions League has not changed, and the arrogance of the English people is extremely glaring in the treatment of the Champions League.

Manchester United's second Champions League qualification came in the 1957-1958 season.

This time Busby's side once again showed their dominance, reaching the last four again without bloodshed, but with it came a test of fate.

On the way back from the second leg of the quarter-final draw with Belgrade, the United manager, some club staff and journalists were on an Elizabeth Class GALZUAS57 flight in Munich to refuel. It was a very snowy day, and after refueling, the pilot failed to take off twice until the third attempt, when disaster struck, and the plane crashed at the end of the runway, crashing into a civilian house, and the time was fixed at 15:04 on February 6, 1958.

Twenty-three people were killed on the spot, including seven key players, and allow me to name them one by one: Jeff Bent, Roger Byrne, Eddie Coleman, Mark Jones, David Peg, Tommy Taylor, Liam Whelan, Frank Swift (the first post-war England captain international). Two weeks later, talented rookie Duncan Edwards died after treatment failed.

In the Munich air disaster, Manchester United lost 8 main players forever, but fortunately, Busby escaped the clutches of fate. He was seriously injured and critically ill many times, and on two occasions he had even finished his dying prayers, and was only a glimmer away from death. However, he made a miraculous recovery with incredible faith and insisted on returning to coach at the club.

The fighting does not end with tragedy. In the first leg of the semi-finals, Manchester United, who lost almost the entire first team, used the reserve team to put together a set of lineups to meet the visiting Rossoneri, and passed 2:1, but lost to San Siro 0:4 in the second leg, and the Champions League journey stopped.

Despite losing the semi-finals on the pitch, Busby and Manchester United did not lose their love of football.

In fact, the moment they make it to continue fighting, they have won a big victory!