The European Super League fiasco makes this golden age retrospective seem naive in ignoring the club’s commercialisation
This is a perfectly watchable documentary, but events have overtaken it, exposing a crucial naivety. It is about the soap-operatic tragedy and triumph of legendary
Football club
Manchester United, co-written, co-produced and presented by its saturnine bad-boy hero Eric Cantona, and in this version of history, he looms larger than Bobby Charlton or George Best.
Cantona smoulders his way outrageously through his script, though revealing little or nothing about himself, except for one remark about the notorious kung-fu incident against an abusive Crystal Palace fan: “I would ’ave liked to kick him even harder … ” His theme is Manchester United’s 20th-century golden age, from its comeback after the 1958 Munich disaster through to the fairytale ending of the 1999 Uefa
Champions League final. And there it stops. The film goes on and on about Manchester United’s European ambition, European vision, European destiny – all those heroic ideals that now look shabby in the light of what we have just experienced: the club’s greedy participation in the European Super League fiasco. The announcement of which, let’s not forget, followed the club’s executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward meeting with Boris Johnson’s chief of staff Dan Rosenfield, and briefly with the prime minister himself.