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Before the goal, before the game even, there was the tunnel. It’s the moment that stands largest exactly 20 years on, romantic to those who hanker for the days of ill-fitting kits and a bit more pre-match needle; glorious to those who say We Used To Be A Proper Country.
Enter Roy Keane, undeterred by the claustrophobia of the Highbury corridor, finger-pointing and letting rip: “We’ll see you out there … shouting your mouth off, you, every week, you.” Drop in some bleeps. Patrick Vieira is at the other end, taking the heat for having a pre-match pop at Gary Neville. The referee/headteacher, Graham Poll, transforms into a yucca plant, calming Keane until it’s time. Out there they go.
By 1 February 2005, José Mourinho’s Chelsea have turned the Premiership into a one-horse race, 10 points ahead of second-placed Arsenal, whose long duopoly with Manchester United is coming to a close. It’s signified by the two captains. Keane and Vieira are both up for the fight, plenty of content sorted for the eventual ITV documentary, but nearing the end of a to-and-fro that has lasted close to a decade. At 33, Keane is all bruised up and months away from his acrimonious exit (someone recover those MUTV tapes, please). Vieira is still sprightly at 28 but will leave in the summer for Turin, the winning penalty in the FA Cup final against United his last act. This is Keane and Vieira’s final meeting in the league.
The tunnel tension is predictable considering the reverse fixture at Old Trafford three months previous. A 2-0 home victory was a leg-breaking contest, Mike Riley somehow not showing red on the evening as Ruud van Nistelrooy slotted in from the spot, amends made from his late penalty miss in the same game the season before. Arsenal’s unbeaten streak in the league finished at 49.
The two teams continued to go at each other after the final whistle, a 17-year-old Cesc Fàbregas hurling pizza at the sexagenarian Sir Alex Ferguson to give rise to a legendary battle. That of the Buffet. Arsène Wenger later recalled the loss in his autobiography as “a heavy blow for me and the team. We knew that the good times were over, that unique moment, the time without fear had passed, and we knew it would be hard to recapture that state of grace.”
Previous roughhousing of winger Robert Pires is what prompts Vieira’s words for Neville, and the Arsenal captain is the early star at Highbury in another breakneck scrap, heading in from a corner inside eight minutes. Ryan Giggs equalises but Dennis Bergkamp lasers the ball through Roy Carroll’s legs to restore Arsenal’s lead before half-time. Wayne Rooney, in his most watchable era, is a charged-up bumper car designed for this encounter and creates Giggs’ goal with a cushioned layoff. Poll does well to keep Rooney in play when the temper threatens to go out of bounds.
Rooney is one part of Ferguson’s future project. Cristiano Ronaldo, ballerina feet and stepover chic, is another, though two goals in 21 league games states his rawness. In the second half is a look into what he’ll become. Touchline chalk is swapped for the stuff that matters: a less human, more efficient presence inside the area. His first is a low pulveriser from a tight angle, his second a tap in on the goalline, the lead now United’s before the hour mark.
Vieira, Giggs, Bergkamp and Ronaldo. But the most delicious goal of this classic belongs to a defensive player. He goes on to have an excellent career, earning 118 caps for the Republic of Ireland, but looks out of place in the aforementioned list.
John O’Shea is brought on for the last 30 minutes with basic orders. “The manager told me, as I came on, to sit in front of the back four, don’t move,” O’Shea later told the journalist Andy Mitten. “Sit in there. Keep it simple.” Support Keane and Paul Scholes in the middle and hold on. When Mikaël Silvestre is sent off with 21 minutes left for head-butting Freddie Ljungberg – a red had to fly at some point – it makes even less sense to disobey orders.
But, hey, let’s live a little. As Gabriel Heinze drives down the left in the 88th minute, O’Shea sees Heathrow’s third runway leading into the area and Scholes, controlling the entire evening, spots it too. A first-time pass with the outside of the boot finds O’Shea, who sees Manuel Almunia, the Arsenal goalkeeper, in the periphery advancing to close the angle. With the left boot comes the perfect dink, the ball taking its time through the night before the net dances and O’Shea turns to face his teammates. Disbelief colours his face, the out-of-body experience over, having briefly entered the POV of life as Rooney or Ronaldo.
In an interview with Off The Ball in 2020, O’Shea claimed he’d done similar in training and that his stunned turnaround was simply an “awful Eric Cantona impersonation with the hands out”. So perhaps it’s less shock, more homage. Tongue-in-cheek or not, whatever’s happening inside, the goal is sublime, the finest of O’Shea’s career, even if it lacks the importance of his Anfield winner in 2007, or his strike against Arsenal in the 2009 Champions League semi-finals.
“A spirited and inexhaustible Manchester United cannot have given up hope of the title after this,” writes Kevin McCarra in the Guardian at full-time, with Keane having “one of those nights when power somehow surges through his ageing body”. But there’s a futility here as Mourinho’s Chelsea refuse to slip, this title theirs, as is the next, the age of red on red over.
