Brondby 2 Manchester U 6

Brondby 2 Man­chester Uni­ted 6, Parken Sta­dium, UEFA Cham­pi­ons Lea­gue Group Sta­ge, Oct­ober 21, 1998. Ry­an Gig­gs re­gistered a brace as Man­chester Uni­ted out­classed Dan­ish Su­per­liga Cham­pi­ons Brondby 6-2 at Parken Sta­dium in Copen­ha­gen. Also on score­sheet were Andy Cole, Roy Ke­ane, Dwight Yorke, and sec­ond ha­lf sub­sti­tute Ole Gun­nar Solskjaer.

Den­mark in­ter­na­tion­al Pe­ter Schmei­chel was up ag­ainst his old club as Man­chester Uni­ted played Brondby in the UEFA Cham­pi­ons Lea­gue in Oct­ober 1998. The Old Traf­ford men had ma­naged a cred­it­able two-all draw ag­ainst 1997-98 Ger­man Bundes­liga run­ners-up Bay­ern Mu­nich in front of a ca­pa­city ho­me crowd of 75,000 people at the Olympic Sta­dium in their pre­vi­ous Cham­pi­ons Lea­gue fix­ture, where­as The Boys from Vestegnen had lost two-nil to Span­ish Pre­mier Di­vi­sion gi­ants FC Bar­celona at a ha­lf-full Camp Nou. The FA Carling Pre­miership si­de fou­nd them­selves a goal up with­in two min­utes as Ry­an Gig­gs fou­nd the net from a few yards out af­ter Brondby shot stop­per Mo­gens Krogh had failed to hold a cross by Wes Bro­wn. Man­chester Uni­ted kept on push­ing for­ward and had their sec­ond thro­ugh the ir­re­press­ible Gig­gs who com­pleted his brace by head­ing ho­me a cross from Swe­den in­ter­na­tion­al Jes­per Blom­quist on twenty-one min­utes. And sev­en min­utes la­ter Andy Cole hit a third goal for the vis­it­ors when the pro­lif­ic stri­ker un­leashed a well pla­ced shot from just out­side the area that went pa­st Krogh and in­to the bot­tom right-hand cor­ner of the net be­fore Kim Daugaard pulled one back for the Danes in the thirty-fifth min­ute as he be­at Schmei­chel wi­th an op­por­tun­ist­ic free-kick. Af­ter the re­fresh­ments, Man­chester Uni­ted put the mat­ch well bey­ond reach for Brondby cour­tesy of an un­stoppable ef­fort from Roy Ke­ane ten min­utes in­to the sec­ond ha­lf and the vis­it­ing te­am stret­ched their lead fur­ther when Dwight Yorke con­ver­ted an ac­cur­ate cross from Phil Ne­ville in the fifty-ninth min­ute. Then, on the hour ma­rk, Al­ex Fer­guson de­cided to re­place Cole wi­th Ole Gun­nar Sol­skjaer and it took the clin­ic­al sharp­shoot­er on­ly two min­utes to find the back of the net af­ter en­ter­ing the pitch. The last goal of the mid­week en­counter be­longed to Brondby, tho­ugh, as Ebbe Sand sco­red a sec­ond con­sol­a­tion for the hosts in the fi­nal min­ute of nor­mal time af­ter Schmei­chel had on­ly par­ried a shot from late sec­ond ha­lf sub­sti­tute Ruben Bagger.

Af­ter maul­ing Ebbe Skovdahl´s Brondby by six goals to two, Man­chester Uni­ted were now top­ping Cham­pi­ons Lea­gue Group D wi­th five points from three ga­mes, one point ahead of FC Bar­celona and Bay­ern Mu­nich. Else­where in the Cham­pi­ons Lea­gue, Ath­let­ic Bil­bao and Ju­ventus played out a goal­less draw at San Mames Sta­dium, Olympia­c­os edged out AFC Ajax one-nil at the Olympic Sta­dium of Athens where Alex­is Al­ex­an­dris net­ted the win­ner for The Red-Whi­tes sev­en min­utes ahead of the break, Bay­ern Mu­nich also won one-nil ag­ainst FC Bar­celona at the Olympic Sta­dium in Mu­nich, In­ternazionale of Mil­an be­at Spar­tak Mo­scow two-one at San Siro, Kais­er­slaut­ern de­feated PSV Ein­doven by an identic­al sco­reline  at Phil­lips Sta­dium, Rosen­borg over­came Gal­ata­s­aray three-nil at Lerkend­al Sta­dium thanks to a hat-trick by Sig­urd Rush­feldt, FC Porto emer­ged win­ners by the ex­act same score ag­ainst Di­n­amo Zagreb at Es­ta­dio das Ant­as thro­ugh goals from Dorival Guid­oni Ju­ni­or, known simply as Doriva, and Zlatko Za­hovic, Re­al Mad­rid de­mol­ished Sturm Graz by six goals to one in a one-si­de af­fair at San­ti­ago Bern­abeu, whi­le Ar­senal and Dy­namo Kiev shared the points in a one-all draw at Wemb­ley Sta­dium, wi­th Den­nis Ber­gkamp scor­ing for North Lon­doners and Ser­hiy Rebrov find­ing the tar­get for the Ukrain­i­ans. Brondby Te­am: Mo­gens Krogh, Ken­neth Rasmussen, Bri­an Jensen, Soren Cold­ing, Per Nielsen, Al­lan Ravn, Tho­mas Lindrup, Bo Han­sen, Ole Bjur, Kim Daugaard, Ebbe Sand. Sub­stitutes: Vragel da Silva, Mikkel Jensen, Ruben Bag­ger, Jes­per Thy­gesen, Mads Ol­sen, Soren Krogh, Emeka An­der­sen. Man­chester Uni­ted Te­am: Pe­ter Schmei­chel, Ga­ry Ne­ville, Jaap Stam, Phil Ne­ville, Wes Bro­wn, Paul Scho­les, Ry­an Gig­gs, Roy Ke­ane, Andy Cole, Dwight Yorke, Jes­per Blom­qv­ist. Sub­stitutes: Jordi Cruy­ff, Ma­rk Wil­son, Ole Gun­nar Sol­skjaer, John Curtis, Hen­ning Berg, Mi­chael Clegg, Rai­mond van der Gouw.

Manchester United Quickfacts

Man­chester Uni­ted wal­loped Swedish Fir­st Di­vi­sion out­fit Djur­garden of Stock­holm to the tune of a 6-1 sco­reline in an Inter-Cit­ies Fairs Cup Fir­st Ro­und Sec­ond Leg tie at Old Traf­ford on the 27th of Oct­ober 1964. United´s start­ing el­ev­en were Pat Dun­ne, Shay Bren­nan, To­ny Dun­ne, Bill Foulk­es, Pad­dy Cre­rand, Nob­by Sti­les, Ge­orge Best, Bob­by Charl­ton, Da­vid Herd, De­nis Law, and John Connelly.

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