New Manchester United epic, Opus, rumored to be approximately 84,538 pags long and made from the teeth of baby elephants, is churning out plenty of interesting soundbytes for us to over react to. Last time Sir Alex carefully left a few choice names off his list of five world class players, and now it’s the Manchester Moustache himself bigging up the club at the expense of others,
“I’m not naive enough to think there is only Man United,”
“Barcelona, Real Madrid, Juventus, Milan and Bayern Munich have more than enough right to suggest they’re at the very top of the game, with United and Liverpool.
“Those clubs are the ones with the real tradition and history and power. They have the immense following.
“Others can try, but nobody breaks into that. And they never will.
“The biggest clubs can have bad seasons, bad decades even, but they will never be abandoned or forgotten. That might be seen as me having a go at others, but it’s the reality.”
Really? They never will? Even if a rival club win the treble for the next 900 years they will not be thought of in the same breath as Manchester United? I thought so.
It’s fine to be confident in your spot at the top of the table, but to tell your rivals that – regardless of whatever stunning success they may achieve – they will still never be your equal is, well, very “Gary Neville”. At least he had the class to include his best friends at Liverpool in the ‘elite’ group, though.