Ferguson: I’m nervous about honouring Munich anniversary

IF THE hand of history has been placed on Alex Ferguson’s shoulder this season, it is not something that the Manchester United manager is entirely comfortable with, as the club’s date with destiny begins to loom on the horizon.

Moscow, May 21, 2008. The Champions League Final. Forty years on from United’s first European Cup triumph and fifty years since Matt Busby’s blossoming young team was wiped out on a snow covered airfield in Munich.

There is a certain symmetry about United’s attempts to be crowned champions of Europe this season, and Ferguson’s new, exciting team, driven on by the peerless talent of Cristiano Ronaldo, may yet earn favourable comparisons with those Busby Babes, whose lives were cut short in the disaster on February 6, 1958, if they emerge as Europe’s best in the Russian capital in four months’ time.