07 November 2023 , 06:00
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Seventeen years on, what Rio Ferdinand remembers most is the cold. Manchester United went to Copenhagen as huge favourites for a Champions League group stage game and were sucker punched.
But as Erik ten Hag’s team travel to Denmark for a crunch tie against the same opponents tomorrow night, no one will be surprised if the hosts win again.
It is but another measure of how far United have fallen as a club. In 2006 an understrength team were stunned by former Aston Villa striker Marcus Allback scoring Copenhagen’s first-ever goal in the competition in the 73rd minute. Except rather than it being a do-or-die game it was, as Ferdinand says now, “just one of those.”
Sir Alex Ferguson's side were on the come up, with a young Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo still a couple of years off reaching their peaks… and delivering another Champions League in 2008.
Unlike Ten Hag’s class of ‘23, United won their opening three games of the group stage and the pressure was already off. In any case, the result was just a blip midway through a 12-game unbeaten run in the league. And they ended up reaching the last four in Europe, eventually succumbing 5-3 on aggregate to AC Milan.
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“It was freezing, man, freezing,” Ferdinand, who now works as a pundit for TNT Sports, says. "It was just one of those games that just happened. But they happen, don't they? Do you know what I mean? It's like, what happened after that? We got through the group stages and we still got to the semi-finals.
"You can't let a result like that throw you off of what the bigger, bigger goal is. You know what I mean? We came up against AC Milan [in the semi-finals]. They were a ridiculous team.
Rio Ferdinand reacts during the second half of the defeat to Copenhagen"We were still, not in our infancy, but we were a developing team. Like young Cristiano and Rooney and stuff like that. So we were kind of like 'Whoa, OK, that's the level you got'. But Copenhagen was like, yeah, you get them results, man, but you have to deal with it."
What Ten Hag’s team must deal with tomorrow is not just a Copenhagen side with far more confidence and familiarity with the competition compared to 2006 but the knowledge that they need to win to stand a chance of progressing.
And they are also going to be without a host of big names. Casemiro is suspended, while Luke Shaw, Lisandro Martinez and Tyrell Malacia remain out injured and there are doubts over Marcus Rashford, Victor Lindelof and Harry Maguire.
Man Utd team vs Copenhagen in 2006: Van der Sar; Brown, Vidic (Ferdinand 46), Silvestre, Heinze (Evra 80); Fletcher (Scholes 71), Carrick, O'Shea; Ronaldo, Rooney, Solskjaer. Subs not used: Kuszczak, Smith, Richardson, David Jones.
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