Man Utd 2 Bayern Munich 1

Man­chester Uni­ted 2 Bay­ern Mu­nich 1, Camp Nou, UEFA Cham­pi­ons Lea­gue Fi­nal, May 26,1999. The 1999 Cham­pi­ons Lea­gue Fi­nal turned out to be one of the most mem­or­able mat­ches in his­tory as Man­chester Uni­ted be­at Bay­ern Mu­nich be­fore a crowd of 90,000 spec­tat­ors at the Camp Nou. Af­ter be­ing 1-0 down at the ha­lf-time break, Uni­ted came back to win the clash 2-1 cour­tesy of goals from Teddy Sher­ing­ham and Ole Gun­nar Solskjaer.

In the pre­vi­ous en­counter be­tween Man­chester Uni­ted and Bay­ern Mu­nich on the 9th of Dec­ember 1998, the two clubs had played out an evenly con­tested 1-1 Cham­pi­ons Lea­gue Group Sta­ge draw at The Theatre of Dreams, and the Cham­pi­ons Lea­gue Fi­nal in Bar­celona was re­garded as a wide open af­fair. The Man­cuni­ans were mis­sing mid­field­ers Roy Ke­ane and Paul Scho­les due to sus­pen­sions, whi­le Nor­we­gi­an de­fender Hen­ning Berg also missed out be­cause of an in­jury prob­lem. The Olympic Sta­dium te­am, for their part, had to make do with­out the play­ing ser­vices of Brazili­an for­ward El­ber and French de­fender Bix­ente Liz­arazu who were bo­th side­lined wi­th knee in­jur­ies. A mere six min­utes in­to the ga­me at the Camp Nou, Franz Beckenbauer´s Bay­ern Mu­nich were awar­ded a free-kick which for­mer Wer­der Bre­men wing­man Mario Basler sub­sequently power­ed pa­st Man­chester Uni­ted and Den­mark goal­keeper Pe­ter Schmei­chel and in­to the far bot­tom cor­ner of the net to hand The Bav­ari­ans an early 1-0 lead. In the 15th min­ute of the ac­tion packed mat­ch, how­ever, Andy Cole was presen­ted wi­th a golden op­por­tun­ity to level the score for Uni­ted, but the Eng­land in­ter­na­tion­al stri­ker failed to find the tar­get. Sir Al­ex Ferguson´s men came clo­se ag­ain nine min­utes la­ter when a sixty-yard pass from Da­vid Beck­ham fou­nd Cole in­side the pen­alty box, on­ly for his ef­fort to be bloc­ked by Die Mannschaft de­fender Markus Bab­bel. Des­pite re­lent­less at­tack from Man­chester Uni­ted, the stub­born Bay­ern Mu­nich de­fence held firm and ma­naged to keep the op­pos­i­tion at bay for the re­mainder of the fir­st period.

Ottmar Hitzfeld´s play­ers star­ted the sec­ond ha­lf of the con­test in a more de­term­ined way and Carsten Janck­er al­most ad­ded a sec­ond goal for the Ger­mans in the 46th min­ute as the front­man ma­naged to squeeze thro­ugh a shot which Schmei­chel did well do parry out for a cor­ner. As the Cham­pi­ons Lea­gue Fi­nal wore on, Man­chester Uni­ted pro­duced sev­er­al goal scor­ing op­por­tun­it­ies, but the ad­vant­age re­mained wi­th Bay­ern Mu­nich who near­ly doubled their lead when the om­ni­present Janck­er hit the cross­bar in the 83rd min­ute of the con­test. Then, in the very last min­ute of nor­mal time, a flag kick from Beck­ham ev­entually fou­nd Jes­per Blom­quist re­place­ment Teddy Sher­ing­ham who ma­naged to equal­ise as he put the ball pa­st Bay­ern Mu­nich shot stop­per Oliv­er Kahn and in­to the bot­tom cor­ner of the net. And, wi­th just a few sec­onds left of the clash, the ir­re­press­ible Sher­ing­ham head­ed yet an­oth­er Beck­ham cor­ner onto fel­low sub­sti­tute Ole Gun­nar Sol­skjaer who struck ho­me from in­side the six-yard area to give his be­loved Man­chester Uni­ted a his­tor­ic tri­umph over the Bundes­liga gi­ants. Widely re­garded as one of the best fin­ish­ers of all time in the Pre­mier Lea­gue, Sol­skjaer pro­ceeded to pro­duce 126 fir­st class goals in 366 ap­pear­ances for Uni­ted be­fore he de­cided to hang up his goal scor­ing boots in Au­gust 2007. He la­ter went on to man­age Nor­we­gi­an Pre­mier Lea­gue club Molde and Vin­cent Tan´s Car­diff City be­fore he was ap­poin­ted head coach of Man­chester Uni­ted in Dec­ember 2018. Man­chester Uni­ted Te­am: Pe­ter Schmei­chel, Ga­ry Ne­ville, Ronny John­sen, Jaap Stam, De­nis Ir­win, Ry­an Gig­gs, Da­vid Beck­ham, Nicky Butt, Jes­per Blom­qv­ist, Dwight Yorke, Andy Cole. Sub­stitutes: Da­vid May, Phil Ne­ville, Wes Bro­wn, Jon­athan Green­ing, Teddy Sher­ing­ham, Ole Gun­nar Sol­skjaer, Rai­mond van der Gouw. Bay­ern Mu­nich Te­am: Oliv­er Kahn, Markus Bab­bel, Samuel Os­ei Kuffour, Tho­mas Linke, Mario Basler, Stefan Ef­fen­berg, Jens Jere­mies, Lothar Mat­thaus, Mi­chael Tar­nat, Carsten Janck­er, Al­ex­an­der Zick­ler. Sub­stitutes: Has­an Sa­li­h­am­id­z­ic, Tho­mas Helmer, Mehmet Scholl, Tho­mas Strunz, Thor­sten Fink, Ali Daei, Bernd Dreher.

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