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The
team Matt Busby had built from the club's successful youth policy
seemed destined to
dominate football for many years. Such was the power
of the Babes that they seemed invincible. The average age of the
side which won the Championship in 1955-56 was just 22, the
youngest ever to achieve such a feat. A year when they were
Champions again, nothing, it seemed, would prevent the young
braves of Manchester United from reigning for the next decade.
United had
taken their first steps into European football in defiance of the
football authorities and it was on foreign soil that the final
chapter in the story of the Babes was to be written. The aircraft
carrying the United party back from a victorious visit to
Yugoslavia crashed in the snow of Munich airport and the Babes
were no more.
The young
Champions flew out of Manchester to face Red Star Belgrade
remembering the cheers of 63,000 intoxicated football fans. Five
days before Munich, United had played Arsenal at Highbury and
thrilled all those who witnessed that game with a display of the
attacking football that they had made their trademark. Nine goals
were scored ... four by Arsenal, five by United.
That game, on
Saturday, 1 February 1958, had typified the Busby Babes. They
played with such flair and enthusiasm that they thought nothing of
conceding four goals in their efforts to score five. United were
trying to win the League Championship for the third successive
season and by then had already reached the fifth round of the FA
Cup.
To set the
scene for the tragedy which was to shock football, let us consider
how the 1957-58 led up to a symbolic game with Arsenal and the
fateful journey to Yugoslavia. For United, the season had started
well, victories over Leicester at Filbert Street, then Everton and
Manchester City at Old Trafford being the perfect launch towards
the title. Their scoring record was remarkable with 22 goals
coming in the opening six games. Yet when they lost for the first
time it was not by just an odd goal, but by 4:0 at Burnden Park,
where Bolton Wanderers ran rampant in front of a crowd of 48,003.
As 1957 drew
to an end the Babes lost 1-O to Chelsea at Old Trafford, then
picked themselves up to beat luckless Leicester 4-0. On Christmas
Day goals from Charlton, Edwards and Taylor secured two points
against Luton in Manchester. On Boxing Day they met Luton again at
Kenilworth Road and drew 2-2 and two days later the `derby' game
with Manchester City ended in the same scoreline at Maine Road. A
crowd of 70,483 watched that game as the old rivals battled for
pride as well as points.
As the
European Cup-tie with Red Star approached, the side also made
progress in the FA Cup with a 3-1 win at Workington and a 2-0
victory over Ipswich at Old Trafford to see them through to the
fifth round, where they were to meet Sheffield Wednesday.
But the third
target for Matt Busby, success in Europe, was perhaps the
greatest. In 1956 United had become the first English club to
compete in the European Champions' Cup, falling at the semi-final
to the might of Real Madrid, winners of the trophy in the
competition's first five years.
That year, the
European seed had been sown. Manchester had witnessed the skills
of di Stefano, Kopa and Gento, had seen United score ten times
against Belgian club Anderlecht, then hang on against Borussia
Dortmund before a remarkable quarter-final against Atletico Bilbao.
In this match the Babes defied the odds by turning a 5-3 deficit
from the first leg into a 6-5 victory, with goals from Taylor,
Viollet and Johnny Berry, to win the right to challenge Real
Madrid in the penultimate round.
That was where
the run ended, but when United qualified to enter the European
competition again in the 1957-58 season it was clear where the
club's priorities lay. Matt Busby wanted a side which was good
enough to win everything. The FA Cup had been snatched out of his
grasp because of an injury to goalkeeper Ray Wood in the 1957
final, but his Babes were capable of reaching Wembley once again,
and having secured the League Championship in 1956 and 1957 they
could certainly emulate the great side of pre-war Huddersfield
Town and Arsenal and win it for a third successive time.
Uni ted's
second European campaign saw them stride over Irish champions
Shamrock Rovers before beating Dukla Prague 3:1 on aggregate to
reach the quarter-final against Red Star. The Yugoslavs came to
Manchester on 14 January 1958, and played a United side which
smarting from a 1:1 draw at Elland Road against Leeds United, who
had been beaten 5:0 at Old Trafford earlier in the season.
Bobby
Charlton and Eddie Colman scored the goals which gave United the
edge in a 2:1 first leg victory over Red Star, but it would be
close in Belgrade. The run-up to the second leg was encouraging. A
7:2 win over Bolton, with goals from Bobby Charlton (3), Dennis
Viollet (2), Duncan Edwards and Albert Scanlon, was just the
result United needed before visiting Highbury, then leaving on the
tiring journey behind the Iron Curtain.
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