Man Utd v Spurs Europa League final is the worst but most intriguing showpiece match European football has ever known
YOU can label it with whichever mocking moniker you wish.
Hell Clasico? The Donkey Derby? The clash of the Sh**e ’uns?
Or, as one genius headline writer on this newspaper put it, ‘Bilbao Bobbins’.
But tonight will bring us a cup final like no other.
The worst, the most illogical and yet the most intriguing, showpiece match European football has ever known.
Even if Ange Postecoglou wins the Europa League, he is still set to be sacked. If Ruben Amorim loses, he will probably survive.
And yet when the ‘glory, glory’ boys of Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur face off here in the Basque Country tonight, the stakes will be skyscraping.
Champions League football for the winners, oblivion for the losers.
Because, here are two of the five worst sides in the Premier League, two finalists who have FORTY-FOUR defeats between them in all competitions this season, vying for one of football’s great prizes.
While the magic 40-point barrier used to be a guarantee of Premier League survival, either Spurs or United will secure a place in the European elite tonight without having even reached it.
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But rather than try to belittle this match by claiming that the winners do not deserve Champions League qualification — as Arsene Wenger and plenty of others have done — we should be celebrating it.
Unpredictability is what makes knockout football special. The best team in the land always wins the title. But underdogs can win cups.
And even though these are two filthy-rich ‘Big Six’ underdogs, they have been playing like lowdown mongrels all season long.
United wouldn’t even have qualified for the Europa League had it not been for the toenail VAR offside call which denied Coventry City a ridiculous 4-3 comeback victory in last season’s FA Cup semi-final.
But so what? Cup football can be gloriously silly. That’s kind of the point.
It certainly hasn’t stopped tens of thousands of fans travelling on trains, in-direct planes, automobiles and ferries — invading Bilbao by air, land and sea to be at Estadio de San Mames tonight.
The logistics make getting here seem like a mix between the BBC’s Race Across the World and Hanna-Barbera’s Wacky Races.
But trophies make memories.
Man Utd vs Spurs – Europa League final: Kick-off time, TV channel and live stream info for Bilbao clash
Newcastle fans will remember this season for winning the Carabao Cup for far longer than they will recall finishing third or fourth in the league.
Supporters of United, and especially those of Spurs, would cherish this night if their team wins.
You can make a strong case for either side to prevail. Spurs seem to have United’s number – winning all three of their previous meetings this season.
And if you believe in omens, that this is a year for drought-busting — after Crystal Palace won their first-ever major silverware and Newcastle ended a 70-year wait — then why not a first trophy in 17 years for Spurs?
Yet United, for all their Muppetry in the league, boast the recent trophy-winning experience.
They lifted last season’s FA Cup, as well as the Carabao Cup the previous year, under former boss Erik ten Hag — a man whose stock seems to rise after every match Amorim takes charge of.
Man Utd vs Spurs – Europa League final: Kick-off time, TV channel and live stream info for Bilbao clash
In Bruno Fernandes, United have the final’s best player, while Spurs’ chief creative influences – James Maddison and Dejan Kulusevski – miss out through injury.
And if we’re going with omens again, then Jose Mourinho won his first European trophy on this day, May 21, 2003, at the age of 40 years, three months and 24 days.
His fellow Portuguese, Amorim, is just one day younger.
But frankly, who knows, when the form book reads like this: United two points from their last eight Premier League games; Tottenham five points from their last 11.
For months now, both teams have been turning it on for Thursday nights and tossing it off on Sunday afternoons.
United’s route to Bilbao has been tougher, their semi-final thrashing of the final’s hosts Athletic Club, was particularly impressive, while their quarter-final comeback victory over Lyon was surely the most astonishing game of football played this season.
Tottenham’s defeat of 2022 champs Eintracht Frankfurt was their one genuinely remarkable scalp.
It might be argued that this match is proof of the Premier League’s depth, when its 16th and 17th-placed clubs are contesting a European final.
But there has been no English winner of the Europa League since Maurizio Sarri’s Chelsea defeated Unai Emery’s Arsenal in 2019 — when two managers enduring brief reigns in London met in Azerbaijan for another final billed as a scrap between two average teams.
Yet Chelsea and Arsenal finished third and fifth respectively that season.
That final had nothing on this one.
The Europa League has become more logical, more pure, this season, now that clubs from the Champions League no longer parachute into its knockout phase.
It has also become easier to win — under the old format, Manchester City, Juventus, Monaco and Sporting Lisbon would have plunged into this competition.
But nobody will remember any of that in years to come.
Man Utd vs Spurs – Europa League final: Kick-off time, TV channel and live stream info for Bilbao clash
This is win-or-bust, death-or-glory, with Champions League qualification swelling coffers and making either club an instantly more desirable summer destination for new players.
Big Ange says he ‘always wins a trophy’ in his second season but, then again, none of his previous second seasons were at Spurs.
Amorim says this could be ‘the worst United team in history’ and yet their Europa League run, like last season’s FA Cup progression, has conjured up some impossible victories, as if, no matter how bad they are, there is still a strange kind of magic deep within the club.
So for what it’s worth, here’s a prediction of sorts: United to equalise in the final minute of extra-time through makeshift centre-forward Harry Maguire.
And then the longest penalty shootout in the history of European football, in which at least 40 consecutive spot-kicks are missed…