Manchester United Fan View: After Europa League, United must inspire and unite the city

When such a brutal tragedy hits so close to home you can’t help but look inwards. Every moment you’ve personally had in the vicinity of the incident becomes heightened, and, because you can’t even try to begin to comprehend the intolerable pain that those genuinely wrapped up in the deaths are feeling, you look to provide comfort in any sort of fashion.

For some people that was simply writing, liking, or sharing a social media post, for Manc poet Tony Walsh that was scribing a primal scream of a piece that defined the city and honoured the dead in a potent, heady mix, while for those in or around the Manchester Evening News Arena when Salman Abedi blew himself up and killed twenty two innocent individuals that was leaping to their aid in the best way they could.

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On Wednesday night, Jose Mourinho and Manchester United had their own chance to try and bring just the slightest bit of positivity to those devastated and to the city of Manchester itself. Of course, in the grand scheme of things, it didn’t really matter. As much as the money, and those involved in the game, and the media, and some particularly tribal section of fans, and the never-ending twenty four hour news cycle would like you to think that football is the be-all-and-end-all of our lives. It’s the distraction, and supposedly the entertainment, that’s meant to provide relief. Monday night was the ultimate reminder of its ultimate insignificance.

Yet, at the same time, nothing brings people together quite like football. In many ways, Manchester United dare not have lost against Ajax, especially since any post-match declarations that they’d been overcome by the emotion of the occasion would have felt cheap and a slap in the face to those that have been left paralytic with genuine grief. Rather than being overwhelmed and stagnating in the face of such a hugely emotionally and defining game Manchester United stood up and were counted, though, and gave a vintage Jose Mourinho performance of grit, organisation, and ruthlessness.

But with Manchester United having risen to the occasion against Ajax, they have the chance to not just use this tragedy to propel themselves to further glory next season, but to inspire, support and bring the city back together. We’ve seen it before in sport. After the decimation of their squad in the Munich Air Disaster, Manchester United themselves went all the way to the 1958 FA Cup final, while even their first ever European Cup triumph in 1968 was built out of this tragedy, too. More recently, the Boston Red Sox responded to the bombing of their city’s marathon on April 15 by winning the 2013 World Series. Primarily because they saw it as their duty to do so.

Professionally, Jose Mourinho knows that the EFL Cup and Europa League triumphs only papered over the cracks of their diabolical league form, and he will need to drastically improve upon sixth place in order to prove he can take Manchester United to the heights demanded by the club and its supporters. Now Jose Mourinho can also insist that doing so has an even greater significance, as he can declare that returning Manchester United to the summits of English football will help to restore some semblance of normality to a city that has already been and will forever be changed by the events of Monday night.