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Ferguson hails late, late show

Alex Ferguson paid tribute to the never-say-die spirit of his Manchester United side after their late-late show against Marseille…

Thu Sept 30 1999 - 01:00

Alex Ferguson paid tribute to the never-say-die spirit of his Manchester United side after their late-late show against Marseille. He claimed that teams that take risks, like United had to do at the end, deserve success. "You take risks, and you deserve everything you get from a game like that.

"I wasn't confident in the second half with us 1-0 down and time running out. But I am always confident that we will never give in. The qualities of determination and persistence are always in abundance at Manchester United, and that is why we won.

"But I felt we deserved to win over the 90 minutes because we created more chances. Because you score late people think you are lucky, but we were never lucky in this one," added Ferguson.

Ferguson admitted that the French side did a superb job in closing down the threat from David Beckham. "They handled Beckham well. And because we had Solskjaer as a third attacker it meant we were not getting any sort of crosses into the box.

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"So you have to take a risk, and that was taking off Henning Berg and playing man for man in defence. I'm sure Berg was happy at the end and delighted to thank his team-mates for the goals that cancelled out his mistake."

Talking about United's killer strikes, Fergie added: "Andy Cole's goal was pure instinct, the 'keeper had no chance. The second by Paul Scholes was the reward for sheer tenacity. To be able to force the ball home like that while he was on the ground was a great effort."

Marseille coach Rolland Courbis said: "Manchester United were the superior side, but it was bitterly disappointing and hard to take that they were allowed to score two goals that late."

Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger said that his side's qualification for the second round "is in our own hands now".

Wenger said he told his players at half-time: "We have to be more audacious. In the first half we struggled to cope with Barcelona's technical play and we were too often outnumbered in midfield. So I pushed Bergkamp further forward in the second half and generally we played higher up the pitch."