The performances of Harry Maguire and Andre Onana earned Mesut Ozil’s seal of approval as Manchester United narrowly saw off FC Copenhagen in a much-win Champions League group-stage clash.
On a night of redemption at Old Trafford, two much-maligned players stepped up to prove, once and for all, that not all heroes wear capes.
Harry Maguire scored the winner at one end, the former captain’s Manchester United ‘Remontada’ continuing after that Brentford assist and that Man of the Match display against Sheffield United. Then, in the dying seconds of stoppage time, it was Andre Onana’s turn.
A goalkeeper who saves ‘clutch’ penalties with the game on the line? With all due respect to David de Gea, Onana’s fabulous stop to deny Jordan Larsson from 12 yards felt distinctly alien but very, very welcome.
Manchester United survive Champions League scare
And Ozil, the former Arsenal, Real Madrid and Germany playmaker who knows a thing or two about life under near-constant scrutiny, did not waste the chance to come out in support of two players who may just look back on this night as the night when their Manchester United careers changed forever.
“Harry Maguire and Andre Onana deserve that,” Ozil writes on Twitter. “Silencing their haters.”
A first win of the group-stage keeps Manchester United’s hopes of knockout stage football the other side of Christmas alive.
After a dull first-half, the Red Devils were a team transformed in the second, inspired by the introduction of Christian Eriksen. In truth, the three points should have been wrapped up and in the bag long before Maguire broke Copenhagen’s resistance, Alejandro Garnacho and the toiling Marcus Rashford both squandering opportunities one-v-one.
‘We can create something’
“Players are stepping up and getting their markers into the season,” Ten Hag tells the Man United website. “From there, they get the belief, as you have seen with Harry Maguire and Andre Onana.
“I think there are others with good performances. If we produce that and go from game to game, we can create something.”
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