Firstly let me introduce myself, I am Sunil Thakur here, one of the moderators of the community, writing a small review of the screening.
We always wanted to have a screening for a City match, as not everyone here in Mumbai actually understand how big the rivalry between the two clubs is. Just few days back on Feb 6 th, the 50 th year of the Munich Tragedy, a big tribute was paid by everyone associated with the club and also all football fans across the world. We thought we could pay our tribute by having a special screening for the City match.
On match day we got a special cut out of the players who had lost their life in the tragedy, everyone paid their respect & tribute by lighting up a candle. As planned we also played a special video about the players and the tragedy. I think the emotions got to everyone, that explains the somber mood before the start of the match. Just before the match we got a call from one of our members who now works at Old Trafford saying that he had informed the people there about our screening and the guys there at Manchester United were going to call us to thank us for everything. We couldn't believe what we had heard and were quite excited about it. but unfortunately the call never came, perhaps they got busy or something, but at least now they know about us.
By the way credit has to be given to the City fans for behaving themselves so well during the one minute silence, before the match.
Everyone knows what happened in the match, so I am not going to say much. Perhaps all the emotions got to the players as well and clearly we dint play well. City played well and deserved to win.
About the screening, we had few problems at the start with the clarity of the channel, but thankfully it was worked out after 20 minutes. This time instead of we writing about the screening I am going to include few reviews written by our members who had been to the screening.
1. Paras Bhatia:
Me and a couple of friends reached the venue just after 6. The Munich video was already going on and most of the people had arrived. We lit candles near the picture of the Busby babes before settling down to watch the video. We couldn't watch the full video because kick off time arrived and the atmosphere was pretty upbeat since most of us were expecting at least a win if not a thrashing of our city rivals. The match started and neither of the teams looked very dominating . However City soon improved their performance and were rewarded with the 1st goal of the match scored by Darius Vassel.
However all of us were unfazed and we hoped that United would soon equalize. After all OT is our fortress. At 45' the second goal was scored by Benjani and the atmosphere became a bit sombre. Feeble attempts to charge up the atmosphere were made by few people but most of us were too shocked to say anything. Those of us who were eating the appetizers didn't have the will to eat anymore. The second half was also dominated by man city as they completely halted United's attempts to score goals. Carrick provided an injury time goal but it was too late for it to be taken for anything other than a consolation before going into the match against Arsenal at OT on 16th Feb. after the match , pictures were clicked as is the tradition after every screening(many glum faces can be spotted in the pictures). The food was good and the service was also good.
Pre match atmosphere could have been more electric(Glory Glory Man United was sung just once during the entire screening and that too after the pictures were taken ). Yet it was a great experience!! Good Job Organizers.... Hope to attend many more screenings and also hope to see United win this year's league!!!!!!!
Hightlight: The main highlights of the screening were the Munich video,seeing our team walk out in the retro kit and the pre-match ceremony including the minute's silence(Observed without any disturbance.. Good job City fans!).
Suggestions: What I found different from the Liverpool screening was that the atmosphere during the city game was less electric. During the Liverpool game, most of the time we were continuously chanting,but here it was not like that. I expected much more enthusiasm here since
this was a very special match. So ,myself included of course, hopefully everyone will go through most of the chants before we meet up for the home game against Liverpool on 23rd March.
GLORY GLORY MAN UNITED !!!
2. Udayan Kotibhaskar:
A fantastic job by the organizers, a was touched by the candle lighting thing. Great job guys, hats off!!! The videos were awesome!
About the screening, well, no offense, I thought we were just not cheering the team. Agreed, that United were already trailing by the time we were getting into the mood, but hey, we could have always started right from the start! This is cliched but it's times like these when we need to get right behind the team. Even OT was silent, guess just affected by the anniversary.
I really think we need to get ourselves acquainted with the chants and start singing them from the first whistle. It's our screening, it's our team and it's our love for them.
I hope we are more loud and frequent in our cheering next time.
COME ON YOU REDS!!! GLORY GLORY MAN UNITED!!!
In the end on behalf of all the Moderators, I will like to thank everyone who had come for the screening.
Sunil Thakur
MUFCM
