Bruno Fernandes’ post-match interview after the humiliating loss to Como took aim at many things, including the tendency to analyse the club’s present in relation to its past. Fernandes wasn’t disrespecting it but suggesting that these are very different times. Just a week earlier, Lisandro Martinez stated that we don’t have to go that far back, and that the present situation is different from the one Michael Carrick inherited at the start of the year. While Martinez didn’t mention the club’s history as such, Michael Carrick represents it.
That didn’t stop Michael Carrick from invoking the club’s history ahead of the game this weekend. An emotional Michael Carrick also acknowledged that something had to change, but unlike Martinez and Fernandes, he stated that the club had lost its way.
Essentially, he believes that there was a way, that it was the right one, and that the club needs to get back to that. He also highlighted individuals who represented that. Some cynical observers will look at Michael Carrick’s invocation as unusual and even as the cause of the club’s decline, but that’s as simplistic an observation as invoking the history for merely symbolic purposes.
We know that Michael Carrick isn’t one for lots of words. The modern manager is often seen primarily as a tactician, but one only has to look up the clips from popular fly-on-the-wall documentaries of the day and their touchline antics to know that emotional doesn’t cut it when describing their behaviour. Not to mention, some rely on affirmation tactics that wouldn’t look out of place in a locker room managed by Ted Lasso. They’re strong but certainly not the silent type. Emotion’s not a problem. Most United fans would not just be sympathetic to Michael Carrick’s sentiments but also be inclined to agree with his claim. Invocation is not a problem.
If the Munich tragedy represents anything, it’s to keep going, especially when times are tough – and tough doesn’t begin to describe the tragedy. The likes of Bryan Robson are celebrated to this day because he never looked at anyone but himself. It’d be silly not to invoke this in a sporting environment, but history is often decoupled from its substance; that’s the real problem. Michael Carrick was trying to get this under the players’ skin and concretise it on the pitch.
Michael Carrick has not played a card; his invocation was sincere. The players weren’t in midweek.