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MOTD: Cambridge United 0-0 Manchester United

By on January 23, 2015

In November 2012, a young, newly-minted professional footballer Liam Hughes was loaned out to non-league outfit Corby Town after struggling to break into Cambridge United’s starting eleven.  At the same time, Daley Blind was in the middle of a breakthrough season at Ajax and Marcos Rojo was establishing himself as a starter in Argentina’s defense. 

In 2014, these different paths diverged still further.  What was Liam Hughes doing last summer?  Not playing in a World Cup final, as Rojo did, or a semifinal, like Blind (where he actually faced Rojo).  From the limited details of his career supplied on the internet, Hughes was enjoying his offseason rest having finally become a starter for Cambridge and penned a new deal with the club. 

Only luck would have it that Hughes should ever even meet both Blind and Rojo.  But in fact, the trio’s fates entwined today on the pitch at Cambridge as Manchester United’s star-studded squad took on Liam Hughes and Cambridge United.  It would just so happen indeed that in the middle of a promising first half for Cambridge, Hughes nutmegged Blind and drew a foul of Rojo in the same play.  The magic of the FA Cup is gone, you say?  This match may be put up in big lights by clever marketing companies for TV networks, highlighting the scoreline, but in reality the magical moments were right under our noses already.  Cambridge hardly even needed the draw they achieved against Man U for the match to have been a special one for the club — losing honorably would surely have sufficed for the supporters.

The FA Cup certainly isn’t what it used to be – the most prestigious title in England – yet you can be fairly certain it will still be an outrage if Manchester United are knocked out in the fourth round by Cambridge United.  The club seized the magic and their chance for glory, yet at the same time United were thoroughly disappointing.  In the first half they were inches away from conceding deservedly, though in the second they cleaned up their act.  For the most part, Cambridge pressured high and snuffed out their attacks, but for a side packed with international stars, the class should have shown through.  Only in brief flashes did it do so.

Early on Cambridge had the better of the chances, looking dangerous from set-pieces, with only a goalie clearance blocking a headed effort from the home side before Josh Coulson sent the rebound over the crossbar from point-blank range.  Towards the tail-end of the second half, as Cambridge’s pressure subsided, Chris Dunn was forced to awkwardly deal with Angel Di Maria’s low bobbling effort, and Di Maria also saw a free-kick curl not too far wide, yet the feeling coming into halftime was that Cambridge were on the front foot.

While that changed in the second half, the scoreline remained the same.  Dunn was forced into multiple impressive stops, one to deny Radamel Falcao’s poked effort with the Colombian having been played through on goal, and another to punch clear the ball after a session of ping-pong in the Cambridge box.  That time, late on, he relied on a goal-line clearance from his defenders as well. 

While United ended with seventy-six percent of possession after the second period, they simply lacked polish in the final pass and in their finishing, especially being up against a club seventy-five places lower than them the English football hierarchy. If Cambridge United end up winning the replay, it won’t be as much due to the magic of the FA Cup as to United’s inconsistency – in the end, this result was ominously reminiscent of Louis Van Gaal’s exit from the League Cup at the hands of MK Dons in their infamous 4-0 defeat last fall.
Man of the Match: Chris Dunn

Photo credit: Wikipedia Commons

About Alex Morgan

Alex Morgan, founder of Football Every Day, lives and breaths football from the West Coast of the United States in California. Aside from founding Football Every Day in January of 2013, Alex has also launched his own journalism career and hopes to help others do the same with FBED. He covers the San Jose Earthquakes as a beat reporter for QuakesTalk.com and his work has also been featured in the BBC's Match of the Day Magazine.