IF YOU ARE a football fan in Ireland and spend any time at all on social media you must surely have seen a recent clip from the upcoming Discovery + series on grassroots football around the world.
Swedish filmmaker Joel Segerdahl visited Donegal for one of the episodes to follow players from Carrowmena and Dunlewey, capturing a spectacularly rubbish pitch beneath the breathtaking surroundings of Mount Errigal.
The football was brutal, the mistakes hilarious and the coarse language comical, hi.
It was beautiful.
Well, this was the Champions League version, hi.
Manchester United and Galatasaray produced an encounter that was the perfect mixture of incompetence, brilliance and ridiculousness at a professional level.
By the end of the 3-3 draw, in which United twice had a two-goal lead, they were bottom of Group A having scored more goals (12) than the three other sides they had faced.
After Bayern Munich and Copenhagem’s 0-0 stalemate later in the evening, that record stood with all teams having played five games.
United must now beat the German champions – who have safely progressed already – at Old Trafford and hope Galatasaray and Copenhagen draw in Denmark.
“I couldn’t go to the dressing room [straight after full-time] because of doping controls but, obviously, it was really bad,” United captain Bruno Fernandes admitted of this performance afterwards.
How apt.
And this was happening in Hell, of all places.
Just like the bog below Mount Errigal, the surface of Rams Park was not the better for a deluge of rain all day in Istanbul.
The raucous, intense noise of almost 52,000 supporters created a kind of din that seemed to dull the sensibilities of the 22 professional footballers.
This was chaos in every sense, United goalkeeper Andre Onana returning for a starring role in the mayhem having recently appeared to have found some solace.
United went two goals up inside 18 minutes. The first was courtesy of a slick, incisive passing move that involved Harry Maguire, Antony, Scott McTominay and a lovely Fernandes nutmeg that teed up Alejandro Garnacho for a far less eye-catching goal than his overhead kick against Everton at the weekend.
Yet this one was exactly the prototype United hope he can repeat for years to come. Coming in from the left, touch, shot, goal. The kind of simple basics that were absent in almost every other facet of the game.
Fernandes’ rocket of a long-range shot doubled United’s lead and had the visitors in complete control.
Until Galatasaray restarted the game.
Then it felt like anybody’s again.
Hakim Ziyech halved the deficit from a free-kick that went straight around a United wall that was not properly set up and completely caught Onana flat footed.
The build up to the concession of that free spoke volumes about United’s inability to control a game through passive, methodical possession.
Fernandes broke forward into the box to try and get on the end of a McTominay cross from near the corner flag down the right.
Seconds later the Portuguese midfielder was commiting a professional foul outside his own box to stop a Galatasaray counter attack while McTominay laboured 30 yards further back.
There wasn’t even half an hour gone.
The real fun was yet to begin, although it really did look over 10 minutes after the break when a lethal United move down the right was finished off by McTominay at the near post.
The next 40 ensured this game truly goes down in lore.
This was the second time in the game United had a two-goal lead and at this point progress to the knockout stages was in their hands.
Then Onana dropped it.
See also the introduction of Anthony Martial in the 58th minute.
The French forward is exactly the type of player who thrives on the pitch when his team are two goals up. There is no one better at sauntering, the ultimate shaper.
But this is not a United side capable of enjoying such a lead and some petulance from Fernandes, who needlessly kicked out to trip an opponent in a dangerous position on the wing, highlighted this.
Ziyech’s resulting free kick was whipped in, Martial opted to duck and cover instead of clear, and Onana wasn’t able to react quickly enough to keep hold of the ball that came straight at him.
It was a tragicomedy in three parts – the Fernandes foul, the Martial defending and Onana goalkeeping – that epitomises the current United team; one that constantly flitters between the ridiculous and sublime and settles on mediocre.
Galatasaray’s equaliser was sensational. One of their substitutes, Kerem Akturkoglu, ran off the shoulder of Sofyan Amrabat’s replacement, Kobbie Mainoo, and produced a deft piece of control to take the ball in his stride and lash a fierce shot into the top corner.
There was still 20 minutes to go and time enough for both teams to waste the kind of chances that could have led to six more goals.
Fernandes hit the post from distance, McTominay burst free from midfield to fire wide from a central area when he really should have at least hit the target while Garnacho curled a shot inches wide.
His replacement, Facundo Pellistri, arrived in the 78th minute and fired one shot over in the box before a scramble in the box in injury time saw him denied on the line by the body of goalkeeper Fernando Muslera.
At the other end, Wilfried Zaha cut inside Diogo Dalot with ease after he came on for Aaron Wan Bissaka, but the former Crystal Palace star struck a tame shot straight into the welcome hands of Onana when a finish a couple yards either side would have found the net.
“We should have taken three points, it’s clear, but it’s also in more games. At home against Galatasaray, away in Copenhagen, we played so good so I have to make a big compliment to the team,” Ten Hag began after, before accepting responsibility.
“But also in the same moment I have to criticise the team and us as a coaching staff, me as a manager, we are not defending good enough. We are leading 3-1 and then you can’t afford such mistakes we are making.”
The boys below Mount Errigal feel your pain, hi.