The Borussia Dortmund players and staff in the dressing room could be heard outside as Neil Wood sidled over to chat. The Manchester United striker Charlie McNeill, scorer in the first-half, denied a penalty in added time and one of the three who failed to convert their spotkick, was 'upset'.
"I don't feel like we got much through that game, so it’s frustrating," Wood said of the referee. The few of us with press passes had managed to find a clip of the tackle on McNeill that not only confirmed it was a patent penalty but that the referee had a perfect view.
Twice the United Under-19s recovered from conceding to draw 2-2 with Dortmund. There is no extra-time in the Uefa Youth League, so it went straight to a penalty shootout. McNeill struck the post while Hannibal Mejbri and Noam Emeran's tame attempts were saved.
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Ralf Rangnick, Chris Armas, Darren Fletcher and Eric Ramsay were all in attendance at Leigh Sports Village. "We’re disappointed to go out," Wood said. "I thought we played quite well, dominated parts of the game, had a lot of possession. We knew their threat was gonna be the counter, so it’s really frustrating to concede, one off our corner, the second one could have been a foul on Will [Fish], but to concede on the counters was really disappointing for us, because we knew that was their biggest threat.
"Credit to the lads for getting back into it. Once we made it 2-2 I thought we were the likelier team to win it. If it went to extra-time I think we won have won the game.
"I thought all of them gave it their all in their own ways. Some through passing, some through tackling, some through working hard, some through running off the ball, some with the ball. It started to open up. We just couldn’t get that final pass right. We were getting a lot of possession in the final third but getting into the box we didn’t have our final bit of quality.
"The group was confident they could go quite far. Judging by tonight, we were playing a really good team, but we dominated a period of the match. It was a tactical battle at certain points, we had to keep changing the build-up structure, changing the press. They changed a bit second-half. It was a good game of football, good battle from the sideline. We gave a good account of ourselves. It’s great for the lads to know the manager is keeping an eye on the young talents coming through."
Development takes precedent but United are desperate to succeed in the Youth League and the FA Youth Cup, with their semi-final with Wolves scheduled for next Wednesday at Old Trafford. Mejbri dropped back down to the academy side to assume the captaincy against Dortmund before returning to training with the first-team and was one of two full internationals, with Zidane Iqbal.
Operating in the No.10 role, Mejbri was more direct and effective in the second-half. Officially, he was fouled three times but he was felled at least double that.
"We had to change our build-up shape a bit. We dropped Sav (Charlie Savage) into the backline to push Alvaro [Fernandez] and Marc [Jurado] higher on the sides, because they were playing quite narrow," Wood explained. "We knew they wanted to be narrow and just break on us. Anything through the middle of the pitch was just flying straight back through us. We knew we had to go down the sides.
"It was just getting Hannibal from a 10, we wanted to build up with a three and a two, so if it did break down we had a bit of security behind the ball. Once we got that message on we felt a bit more secure offensively in possession, and defensively."
United were at full strength bar the absence of striker Joe Hugill, still troubled by an ankle injury he sustained during work experience at Forest Green Rovers. Mejbri, McNeill, Alejandro Garnacho, Alvaro Fernandez, Marc Jurado and Radek Vitek were all recruited at an expense nearing €20million.
In order to compete in the Youth League, the first-team has to qualify for the Champions League. The last time United failed to do so in 2019, they arranged a one-off match with AC Milan at Leigh Sports Village and United intend to organise ad hoc matches against the elite academy if they are consigned to the Europa League or Europa Conference League next season.
"It wasn’t just development," Wood stressed. "This competition has been great for a different challenge. They had some big strapping lads who were powerful runners. We wanted to win, the club wanted to win, the players wanted to win more than anyone, that’s why they’re so disappointed in there. We feel like these guys are really beneficial.
"The Villarreal one (in the group stage) was the biggest challenge. They played a really good system with really good footballers, we got a bit of a lesson here. By the time of the away leg we worked out what they were doing and we were confident going into the game. The plan we had we could give them some problems.
"The same tonight, we’d seen Dortmund in previous games, we knew they weren’t gonna play out too much from the back, they are not a team necessarily patterned in their build-up, we knew they were gonna be direct, so we expected the long balls and counter-attacks".
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