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As the tone goes on, David De Gea provided Harry Maguire with a hospital pass he had inexplicably requested, the Manchester United captain was then promptly attacked by Erik Lamela to allow Youssef En-Nesyri to take Sevilla into advantage with just seven minutes on the clock ticking a bit.
But really, United had set the tone for tonight with the clown car collapse in the latter stages of the first leg at Old Trafford. Sevilla have been absolutely brilliant here in a tournament that does a lot for them and with relegation fears dogging them all season they are now virtually gone but the sheer paucity of United’s performance was truly something extraordinary.
There is mitigation in the missing person list through injury and suspension, and also in United playing almost as much football as possible in a season where that presents an extraordinarily difficult challenge. To a man they seemed mentally and physically spent here in a performance full of bad decisions, poor technique and poor execution. But that mitigation can’t quite excuse what happened here. They’re all tired, guys.
Sevilla’s five unanswered goals after United took a 2-0 lead at Old Trafford last week is truly an extraordinary pile of rake calamity from United’s part. Two own goals. A goal given away in the early stages in front of a raucous crowd by a combination of De Gea’s lack of judgment and Maguire’s understandable but misguided desire to get involved. An attempted header from a Nottingham Forest clearance moments after the break who instead somehow arced in slow motion past a lead-footed United goalkeeper and inside. miles after charging outside his own penalty area and instantly regretting it, doing neither of those things and instead presenting the ball to En-Nesyri. United were the architects of their own downfall who then showed up to complete the building work as well.
And there really could have been many more. Sevilla’s overall excellence and relentless press – on which noting this game served as yet another reminder of how much we miss Lamela’s unique brand of completely one-sided absurdity in the Premier League – hasn’t quite been matched by the composure of the their ending. So many times he was simply presented with the ball by a string of errors from United. Minutes before half-time, United had a huge breakaway when a Casemiro ball intended for Aaron Wan Bissaka instead cleared Sevilla to score what appeared to be the second goal that had come until VAR played a killjoy by correctly noting an offside in the build-up.
The nature and timing of that mistake made the early concession of such a soft goal just after the break all the more infuriating. ‘Quieten the crowd’ must surely have featured prominently on United’s to-do list tonight, yet they were here in the opening minutes of each half doing everything they could to provide wholly unnecessary additional excitement within a bouncy Sanchez Pizjuan.
De Gea may have just played out of that new contract. Maguire has done nothing to stop the narrative that continues to swirl around him. But it was just the most obvious and overtly, cartoonish performances on a night absolutely filled with them. Antony’s occasional attempts to make something happen in the first half were about the only admirable thing, the only non-shit thing about it.
United already have Carabao in their trophy cabinet and would need a surprising slump to lose the top four, but there is serious danger now that the season will end rather bleakly after promising so much. The quadruple talks were always guff – and in fairness guff that almost never came from United or their players, managers or fans – but the chance of winning three knockout trophies was very high.
Now everything is at risk. Brighton certainly won’t be shaking heading into the weekend’s FA Cup semi-final after seeing this game, while another performance like this next week from United and even Spurs might be keen to score a point.
The myriad of individual mistakes were obviously the most troubling element of this show, but it may ultimately be the general apathy and lethargy that proves more troubling. It’s not like United have been knocked out by a Sevilla side that have won this tournament on average once every three years for the past 18 years (our favorite Sevilla stat, by the way, is that they’ve won the Europa League only once fewer than have they won the City of Seville Trophy and now we have every doubt this tally is going to equalize) but that United have never looked able to get back level once they started to pull away from them.
They offered so little and made life easy for Sevilla like Sevilla made life difficult for them. The two teams produced such diametrically opposed performances in every significant way that it was ultimately hard to conclude that they were even attempting to play the same sport.
The final month of this season will be played out at a breakneck pace with matches unfolding absurdly quickly. That means there’s always a chance to fix things right around the corner. But that’s a hopelessly half-full reading of United’s plight after this horror show, which leaves all those matches that appear quick to come and watch at this stage as little more than one more opportunity for humiliation.
