The Class of 92 Page #4

they played a good system.

To watch that mob down the road,

to just be head and shoulders

above everybody else in the league,

in Europe and...

It was really difficult.

I remember watching the World Club

Championship and I was buzzing.

It was Flamengo-Liverpool,

and Flamengo battered them 3-nil.

Zico scored,

and I must have been about 10,

and I was flipping dancing round

the living room,

flipping Liverpool just got beat.

But, I think all things considered,

you play the long game

with Manchester United Football Club

and these people ended up

getting knocked off their perches.

I remember, '99 season, January, Liverpool.

- The FA Cup?

- In the FA Cup.

- One-nil down, weren't we, with what...

- Yeah...

- Five minutes to go.

- Michael scored for them, didn't he?

- Michael Owen?

- Yeah.

That's was my fault, as well.

(LAUGHING)

They just got a cross in,

I just couldn't get my head there in time.

- You remember?

- You left your runner.

I think you blamed me, as well.

Again.

I always remember the

goals I give away, me.

There's that many of them, though,

aren't there?

I thought that was the best atmosphere

of the season.

- To be fair.

- Yeah.

Yeah. That last couple of minutes here.

That's where it all started, I think.

BUTT:
I think the beginning

of the season, '98/'99,

I don't think it was any different

to any other season.

We knew we had a good team,

a good squad.

We expected to go and do well.

Our form was inconsistent

in the early parts of the season.

We were conceding goals.

We were exciting,

the attacking football was brilliant,

but we were still conceding goals

intheleague.

But at the turn at Christmas,

the FA Cup against Liverpool...

(GARY EXHALES IN RELIEF)

What a game that was.

And then it just seemed

to snowball from there.

COMMENTATOR:

You know, the season hasn't been

all Manchester United had hoped for.

Not so far.

But an FA Cup tie against

what is a young Liverpool team,

at this stage, could change that.

One-nil down.

Four minutes, five minutes to go.

A few minutes to go,

they took Paul lnce off,

and Paul had played for me

and went like that to me, you know,

winding me up, just... Wasn't vicious,

it was just, you know, lncey being lncey.

We'd made a substitution,

and brought Ole Gunnar Solskjaer on.

COMMENT AT OR:

Beckham may just take this on.

Lifted towards the head of Cole...

And Yorke!

When you're one-nil down

and you score that equaliser,

you know it's coming.

COMMENTATOR:
Into Cole again...

May break for Scholes.

Solskjaer!

I was on the bench,

and whenever I was on the bench,

I was a fan. I wasn't a sub.

I was in the K Stand, I was singing

the songs, I was up, I was at it.

Shirt was off, tracksuit was off,

I wanted to dive onto their bench

and just celebrate.

To look over to a bench

that thought they'd won a game,

and they've lost it, is the greatest

feeling in the whole wide world.

You know, for us to come back

and score two late goals,

sort of set the tone of the season,

and it was, for me,

it was the turning point that...

Teams knew that,

no matter what the score was,

we would still come back at them.

It's at the back of their mind that,

"They always come back, these."

That season, the Liverpool game,

we knew we'd score late,

- the opposition knew we'd score late.

- Yeah.

And you know what it's like, if you think,

"Against United at Old Trafford."

It's amazing,

because you've played at Newcastle,

and you've been out,

but when you're out of Man United,

and there's like 20 minutes to go,

and it's 2-nil up, you're at other teams

and they say, "Oh, game over."

And you probably say it to the lads now,

"This is Man United, you know they're going

to come back, they'll win this 3-2."

And more often than not, they do.

I think all the boss's teams,

they always came back, didn't they?

Like Bruce's goals to win the league

first time. They always had that...

They went till right at the end.

I think it is fitness, but I also think

keeping possession,

- and Old Trafford being a bigger pitch.

- PHIL:
Desire as well.

I think our biggest strength

is we're all Man United fans, aren't we?

It ultimately comes from the gaffer,

doesn't it, really.

It ultimately comes from him, I think.

What he demands of you,

what demands he puts on you.

If you think, "We will get one more

chance", you get one more chance.

Might not score,

but we will get one more chance.

And we always, if we equalised, we always

tried to get a second one as well.

And the third.

- It was never, yeah.

- It was never enough, never enough.

You win a league and that's not enough.

And next year you've got

to win the league and double.

But I think that was bred in us

from youth-team level,

from B-team, from A-team,

from reserve team,

you know, that was put in us, I think.

The story of Manchester United was great.

Us great players...

Now we could feel...

like the ghosts.

I remember walking the corridors

up to the manager's office at Old Trafford.

And the smell of Sir Matt Busby's pipe.

You just knew there was a big...

Just a big presence about him

still there and...

You just walked past and, you know,

you might see him now and again.

The door would always be open.

I look back now and think, you know,

we should have gone in more

and talked to him more,

but you were scared.

This was like a god.

DANNY BOYLE:
And there were two, like,

big important books in our family.

One was a massive Bible.

And the other book was the photo album,

you know, like black-and-white photos

of us as little kids.

And with a, you know, big extended family

around the area and all that kind of stuff.

Biggest picture in that book, at the back,

was the Busby Babes.

NEWS REPORTER:

On the fringe of a Munich Airport

lies the wreckage of an airliner

still smouldering from a crash,

in which 21 people were killed.

HARRISON:
(SIGHS SADLY)

I heard it at school.

I heard that news at school,

and I was crying my eyes out at school.

You know, and I mean the teacher

took me to another room,

I was that emotional about it, you know.

And I thought, they can't be dead.

The teacher said to me,

"Sorry, Eric, I'm sorry, they are."

GARY:
I think probably 17, 18,

we'd won the Youth Cup,

the Busby Babe comparison

started to come out.

You've got big footsteps to follow here.

You've got lads who were young men,

just wanting to play football,

wanting to dream like we're dreaming.

Their legacy is enormous.

Everything you see there at that club today

was built out of that tragedy

and Sir Matt Busby's determination

to grow another team.

To rebound. To go again.

BECKHAM:
Obviously what he created

at Manchester United

led to what the boss had created

at Manchester United and what,

you know, we were part of.

And you feel that.

FERGUSON:
The most

important part of the history

was Matt Busby's

introduction of young people.

That was uppermost in my thoughts.

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