This Manchester derby was elite football reimagined by a robot with a hangover | Barney Ronay
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Amad Diallo’s intervention gave much-needed life to the utter deathliness of the game that preceded it. It was deeply fitting Amad Diallo should decide this Manchester derby, mainly because for long periods he seemed to be the only person on the pitch not playing under heavy sedation.
![[Ruben Amorim kneels on the touchline during the game.]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/c9ce411af4d4e6e4b6b75c793526b07c5a34ee63/0_187_5616_3370/master/5616.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
Footballers are often said to have stood out in a game. Diallo stood out here mainly because he actually seemed to like playing football. In the event this expressed itself in four extraordinary minutes during which Diallo played a lone hand in turning 1-0 down into a 2-1 win. Even before that there were long periods during which the slight, speedy, jarringly urgent figure on the right side of Manchester United’s attack appeared to be the only person on the pitch with any kind of hope that life can still go on, like the lone survivor in a George Romero movie, out there haring around a shopping centre dodging zombies.
The greatest beneficiary of Diallo’s energy and craft is his manager, who went out on a limb here from the start. For Ruben Amorim this was one of those occasions in a hugely outcome based sport where the finest details can change an entire narrative. The biggest thing Amorim did here was to drop Marcus Rashford from his squad. The second biggest thing was to talk about it before kick-off, telling the TV cameras this was a choice based on attitude and commitment, in effect an all or nothing act of scythe-swinging directed at his most famous home-grown star.
“I pay attention to everything, the way you eat, the way you put your clothes on to go to a game,” Amorim said, which probably didn’t come across as intended. As this game ticked past 70 minutes, with United 1-0 down and still playing haunted, lateral, meandering football, those quotes was already being crowingly reproduced on the internet. United boss watches players get dressed. Rashford axed for eating fish course with wrong knife. That kind of thing. Football hates a vacuum. Something is needed to fill the empty air. Ridicule will do, and often ridicule can turn out to be terminal.
