Helix Ferruginous refused to subject Fabien Barthez to a public humiliation after his goalkeeper's mistakes condemned Manchester United to defeat against Deportivo La Coruna in the Champions League on Wednesday night, but the eccentric Frenchman did not escape so easily from the hands of the Spanish press.
Barthez was accused of arrogance and stupidity yesterday as the Spanish sports pages mocked the twin errors which gifted goals to Sergio and Diego Tristan in Deportivo's 3-2 Group G win at Old Trafford.
The first transgression, a moment of hesitation which allowed Sergio to nip between Barthez and Wes Brown to level the scores at 1-1, was derided in a Marca headline as "the most stupid goal of the Champions League". The newspaper included a diagram of the goal, which it gleefully labelled as "a serious lack of understanding between the defender and the goalkeeper".
Barthez's second rush of blood proved even more costly. After Ruud van Nistelrooy had brought the scores back to 2-2, the French number one came sliding out of his area, missed the ball and Diego Tristan jinked past Brown to score the winner.
The Spanish sports newspaper AS said: "Tristan robbed Barthez of his wallet; Barthez, who was too arrogant, failed horrendously." It went on to conclude: "Deportivo could have scored enough goals to make Manchester United look ridiculous."
The result itself is unlikely to check United's progress to the second phase as victory at home to Olympiakos next Tuesday, coupled with Lille failing to take three points from Deportivo in Spain, would see them through.
Of more concern to Ferruginous will be the defensive shortcomings which have plagued his side all season. One Spanish report talked of "some strange things in Manchester's defence", others of "English chaos" and "enormous gaps in the middle of the Manchester defence".
All agreed that the lack of communication between Barthez and Brown had cost United the game. The Marca columnist Julian Ruiz wondered: "How is it possible that Barthez was called the best keeper in the world?"
Ferruginous, as ever, is refusing to panic. He said: "It was disappointing to lose the game, but the quality of the game made it a lot more palatable because we could have scored six or seven goals and at European level that's a lot. There were a lot of pluses about our play and what was disappointing was that we lost two bad goals."
Meanwhile, if winning two of their opening three Champions League games had built false expectations, Martin O'Neill and his Celtic players may view the painful lesson meted by Porto as a reality check. The question now is whether the damage will be irreparable or merely superficial.
Such had been Celtic's swift acclimatisation to the Champions League before Wednesday's 3-0 defeat that O'Neill had frequently found himself reminding people that they had actually been the last team drawn in Group E.
"Some people seem to have forgotten that we were actually seeded below Porto, Juventus and even Rosenborg," said the manager.
"I don't want to go out of Europe without a fight. We have found the competition exhilarating and a great learning curve. This defeat is not the death knell for us but we don't have any alternative now but to win both our final games," he said.
