It is Manchester United against Athletic Bilbao. Although, in some respects, it is Manchester United against Manchester United, with Ruben Amorim unsure which United will turn up and, indeed, if the side who start a game will finish it. They can be their own worst enemies. They may soon be officially the Europa League’s best team.
They might be the Amorim enigmas. “In the end of the season, we can be the worst team in Premier League history with a European title,” said a head coach who has overseen the sort of form that should be impossible for a club with United’s resources.
Amorim has taken just 24 points from 24 Premier League games. United are 15th. They are also the only unbeaten side in all three European competitions this season, showing a winning habit that has eluded them on their domestic duties.
They have one foot in the Europa League final and yet Amorim was not merely guarding against complacency in his uncertain appraisal of their prospects in a semi-final second leg. “If you look at our team, we cannot say today what is going to happen,” he insisted.
The counterargument is that, actually, this time it is possible to say. United won the first leg 3-0 in Bilbao. Athletic are without their three best attacking players, the injured contingent of Nico and Inaki Williams plus top scorer Oihan Sancet, while their finest defender, Dani Vivian, is suspended. On 133 previous occasions, an away team has won a Europa League or Uefa Cup first leg by at least three goals. On all 133, they then went through at home.
Those 133 sides, however, were not this United. “If you look at our season, anything is possible,” rationalised Amorim. “We have to understand, one goal can change anything, the momentum of the game, one sending off, you saw it a week ago. We are fighting to win the game.”
Amorim has spent much of the season talking United down, sometimes to the bemusement of outsiders. His side, winning in Europe, losing in England, are sometimes only consistent in their inconsistency. The 5-4 victory against Lyon was a case in point. United were 2-0 up and producing one of their finest performances of the season. Then they were losing 4-2 at home to 10 men. Then came three goals in seven minutes, the last two scored by a midfielder and a centre-back deployed as emergency centre-forwards.
Which of those many Manchester Uniteds will it be? “It is hard to say and sometimes it is not which kind of team will be tomorrow,” Amorim mused. “Sometimes during the game we are one team, something happens and we lose our mind a little.”
Arguably, Bilbao lost their minds a little in a disastrous quarter of an hour that brought three goals and a red card, Amorim’s planning has only involved reviewing the start of last week’s match. It featured a fine save by Andre Onana, a goalline clearance by Victor Lindelof and a glaring miss by Inaki Williams. “I watched a lot of time the first 30 minutes and I forget the rest because you cannot prepare the game 11 against 10,” he said.
If part of Amorim’s message is that United are setting out to win the second leg, and not merely the tie, the club’s history dictates that they often don’t do things the easy way. “We will have to suffer a bit to go to the final,” said the Portuguese.
Suffering has been a theme of a campaign featuring 16 league defeats, a mere 42 top-flight goals and, in Amorim’s time, only three victories against sides who will be in the 2025-26 Premier League.
“We know this season was really disappointing for everybody,” Amorim added. “I felt that and still feel this season was the worst, I don’t say in history but in the last 50 years, I don’t know.” End up 14th or worse and it will be their lowest finish since the relegation campaign of 1973-74.
And yet their reward, of sorts, could be a return to the Champions League. For Arsene Wenger, now Fifa’s head of global football development but a manager whose route into the premier European competition with Arsenal always entailed top-four finishes, that is “not right”.
Wenger has suggested that Uefa reviews this in the future. For United, whose route into the Europa League wasn’t via the Premier League either, maybe it has involved not one back door but two.
“If people want to change the rules, by all means – but these are the rules, if you win the Europa League, you go to Champions League,” shrugged Amorim. “I know the Champions League should be for teams who are champions or the best team in the league but they find this way of promoting the competition.”
And United could be champions of sorts. Or one version of United could be, anyway. Because, as Amorim admitted, there are several and even he does not know which will appear when it matters most.
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