Manchester United 1-0 Lyon

Manchester United 1-0 Lyon

Pre-Season Friendly

Wednesday 19th July 2023

Ever heard the one about an English team playing French opponents on a midweek afternoon at a rugby stadium in Scotland?

Don’t re-adjust your screen; it’s true!

In one of the weirdest locations for a pre-season fixture since Accrington Stanley played Marseille at Salford’s rugby stadium in 2019 (made even weirder by the fact that Accrington WON - and Dimitri Payet was playing for Marseille), this time it was Olympique Lyonnais who were the French opponents and Manchester United were the hosts at Murrayfield in, erm, Edinburgh.

It’s the first fixture played at the home of Scottish Rugby (also the largest stadium in Scotland) since Liverpool hosted Napoli in a similar sort of exhibition match four years ago and, given the novelty factor, plus the fact I’d not seen a football game at Murrayfield before despite having whizzed past it on the train dozens of times, plus who knows when the next football game here will be as well, I made sure I wasn’t going to miss out on popping along to this game.

The cheapest tickets were £30 (made sure I snapped one up nice and early because even I don’t want to pay more to watch a friendly - even in these novelty circumstances), and I feel sympathy with anyone who paid more (some seats were priced nearer to £100) simply because you could walk freely around the stadium, move between tiers, swap seats, etc, and no stewards really seemed that interested or bothered about checking tickets to make sure everyone was sat in the correct seat.

Thus, I was able to get some nice views of the Edinburgh skyline and it wasn’t a problem because despite the 68,500 capacity of Murrayfield, the turnout was only 48,500 - and even with a few blocks closed off in the upper tiers, there were still plenty of spare seats in every stand.

These types of games often aren’t the most exciting. They can sometimes be quite tepid and even tedious and credit to the crowd; they didn’t get that bored they turned to a Mexican Wave for entertainment (always a sure sign that a game is sh*t when that happens), but despite a lively first 15 minutes there wasn’t a great deal else to get excited about after that.

It was Mason Mount’s first appearance since signing for Man United a few weeks ago and why Chelsea let him leave is mystifying in my mind - especially when you consider they’ve blown £500M and become absolutely bang average due to their recruitment over the past few windows, and he was included in the starting line-up for the 2.00pm kick-off.

The way the game started it seemed like goals were inevitable as United pressed hard, looked dominant and created lots of chances in the first 10-15 minutes, whilst Lyon themselves had a couple of openings at the other end. It was entertaining, it was good and very positive, and like it would only be a matter of time before the first goal happened.

Then came the lull…

Apart from a Mason Mount shot about five minutes before half-time which was always rising and off-target, that was the only other incident of note up to the interval and it had all become a bit… dull.

With a completely new United team on the pitch at the start of the second period and everyone treated to a bit of ‘Sit Down’ by ‘James’ which kept playing aloud over the PA system for about 10 seconds after the game had re-started (imagine if that was allowed on a regular basis), what proved to be the only goal of the afternoon soon occurred with Donny van de Beek sweeping home a cross on the volley and into the net. Brilliant technique and a moment of quality.

But again, that was the only highlight because the rest of the game was tepid, uneventful and there wasn’t too much else of note of any kind.

Results in pre-season don’t mean much and you can’t really read anything into the ‘performance’ either as when the serious business of the new season starts, the intensity will be massively different. 

But it’s nice, at last, to have visited Murrayfield - it’s been on my ‘To Do’ list for a while and it was a different way to spend an afternoon. The game won’t live long in the memory but the experience of the stadium (decent set-up, nice views - just miles from the pitch and loads of food options) is something I’ll remember more.

And I’ll have to do some research to find out what the biggest stadium is in Scotland now that I’ve not visited. Brechin City? Forres Mechanics? 

Might have to pop to those sometime soon!