STOCKHOLM Jose Mourinho surveyed the scene as he walked slowly across the pitch toward the goal where 15,000 Manchester United fans were massed across three tiers of Stockholm's Friends Arena.They'd sung "Manchester, Manchester, Manchester" many times during the 2017 Europa League final, louder and prouder than they normally would. They belted out the United anthem "We'll Never Die," to the tune of "The Red Flag," with the same intensity, with the songs given extra resonance by the atrocity in Manchester on Monday, when 23 people died.In front of him, Mourinho's players were grouped together, taking turns to lift the 15-kilogramme trophy and take selfies with it. As they did, the fans roared and sang the names of the players. Ander Herrera, Wayne Rooney, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Michael Carrick and even Marouane Fellaini were among those most prominently serenaded.The man-of-the-match, Herrera, had been the first to break ranks and run toward the fans with a United flag, dancing like he did with friends on the terraces when his beloved Real Zaragoza beat Real Madrid to win Spain's Copa del Rey in 2004."Ole, ole, Ander Herrera," hollered United fans. "Ole, ole, ole, ola.He drinks Estrella by the cask. He's not Spanish; he is Basque. Ole, ole, ole, ola.United fans have yet to make a song for Paul Pogba, the world's most expensive player, who was the next to make the run, but he has enough imagination going inside his enthusiastic, Patrice Evra-influenced mind to dance to his own tune. So he didlike a malfunctioning robot. It must be genetic for his friends and familyeach wearing a United shirt with "Pogba No.6" on the back and boogieing their way into Scandinavia's largest stadiuma 20-strong body of enthusiasm that made even the police horses turn their heads away from groups of aggressive-looking Ajax fans.Pogba was still dancing and whooping when he left the stadium in a grey suit soaked by champagne two hours after the final whistle, as the United coach, emblazoned with "take me holm" on the front, edged its way from the underground car park and left for the airport at 12:50 a.m. with players banging on the windows and singing loudly.Though spirits were high, there would be no all-night party in the host city, as there was when United had won their previous European finals in London, Rotterdam, Barcelona and Moscow. It wasn't deemed appropriate. Yet the fans and players were delighted, and even Mourinhomade a change to his own protocol after the match.The Portuguese is reluctant to accept applause from fans after gameshe thinks that's something for the players. But in Stockholm, it was different. His Europa League gamble had paid off, and he walked beyond the players and spread his arms wide, like a living deity, spontaneously letting loose a cathartic scream. With three trophies, he could call his first season at United a success.The adoring fans sang: "Woke up this morning feeling fine. Got Man United on my mind. Jose's playing the way that United should. Oh, yeah! Something tells me I'm into something good."They were lying. United may have been on their minds, but most of them didn't wake up feeling fine because it was 3 a.m. when their alarms went off ahead of their flights to Sweden's capital. Nineteen hours later, they were tasting the glory of the club's sixth European trophy and first Europa League/UEFA Cup. It was the end of a long, hot and often emotional day, and they still had to fly back home, but adrenaline, potently cut with sorrow and alcohol, would help.My day started at 5 a.m., when a quick check of emails on the way to the airport saw one message jump out."Really hope you go out and win that trophy, pal, for the people of Manchester. Colours put to one side mate. Enjoy."It came from Chris, a Manchester City fan as blue as they come. Chris goes everywhere with City, even when he's told not to. He went to Moscow in 2014 for a Champions League game behind closed doors. Chris and his mates were about the only Blues there, and they managed to sneak into the stadium before getting thrown out.If I'd looked at Chris' social media output without knowing him, I would have dismissed him as another bitter Blue. But then Chris' brother married my sister and our worlds began to collideat family functions, where football talk is awkward but unavoidable. He watched his team. I watched mine. He had a couple of red mates; I had a couple of blue mates.I respected him because he followed his team through thick and thin. He was a good football supporter, loyal to the core. Football is important in Manchester. It permeates layers of the social fabric so that even the people who don't go to gamesand more people watch live football in Manchester than any other two-club city in the worldstill have strong opinions. My mother, an Old Trafford girl, doesn't go to games. Yet despite pronouncing United as "yoo-night-ted," she knows which players are out injured.Chris had a deep passion for his club. He wants United to lose every week. I was fine with that because I want City to lose every week. The lines are clearly defined, but sometimes they inevitablybecome blurred. Like when I had to sit in Manchester City's main stand because my job as a journalist required that. I knew that if just one City fan spotted me, then there was potential for a problem, but I also knew that Chris and his mates sat nearby and could be of assistance. Chris would come to say "hello" before derby games, and the chat was kept cordial.But when Manchester City beat United 4-1 in 2013, Chris came to the press box during the game and took a photo of me working, which he then posted to social media to gloat because I clearly did not look happy. I didn't like that. Other journalists were asking who he was while I only wanted to write and meet my deadlines, but I suppose he was only enjoying the moment. It wasn't as if he could wander over to the United section and take photos of depressed faces.Chris' brother Karl, my brother-in-law, is a Blue too. He's raising his two sonsmy nephewsas Blues. It hurts. I've tried to reason with my sister, a Red from a huge family untouched and undiluted by Blues, but she maintains that the kids have the right to support the team they wish and that it is more likely to be City given their dad bought them season tickets and had taken them to their first away game by the time they were three.I've shaken my head, but how could I complain' All I did was support my local team, and I've experienced many, many highs following United, including league titles and European Cups. Along with red friends, we'd goad Blues that they were at Gillingham in the third tierwhile we were in Turin watching United beatJuventus.For a long time, we chided Blues that we needed a proper local rival, like AC Milan had Inter, Real Madrid had Atleticoand AS Roma had Lazio. City, we sneered, were not doing their part in making Manchester a great-enough football city because they were so bad. We had flags celebrating their number of years without a trophy, songs about them being a byword for crapness. We wondered why City would need to have a trophy room in their new stadium since they never won any trophies.Be careful what you wish for, even in jest. City came goodvery goodand they had their SergioAgueromoment, winning the league at United's expense with the final kick of the season. That hurt. That was the last time that football put me in a spin. You tend to grow out of it as you mature, for while football is the most important of the unimportant things in life, it's still only a game.The enmity between Manchester's big two continued as City improved, but the odometer flag at Old Traffordthat counted the years since City last won the league was taken down and the songs were tweaked. City continued to grow. Their average crowds rose above 50,000 in 2016, putting them among the 10 biggest-supported clubs in the world. They were still miles behind United, but they couldn't be ignored.When they signed Pep Guardiola as their manager, they became a major power in world football, a force capable of attracting the best. Guardiola hasn't worked out for them as well as they hoped, but they also believe that he'll come good and win more league titles and the Champions League.I'm a Red, but I loved Guardiola as a player for Barcelona: what he stood for, his intelligence on and off the field and the way he identified with his people, the Catalans. In 2000, I was asked by MUTV to pick out three players to watch out for at that summer's European Championship, and my first one was Guardiola. The presenter looked at me, baffled.I had to cover Guardiola closely as a player, then as a coach for Barca's B team, then their first team. Some of the greatest football performances I've seen in my life were for a team managed by that man. Barcelona 5-0 Real Madrid in 2010 was probably the best. I felt nothing in the heart, no attachment to a team that wasn't my own. But I was full of the greatest respect for their brilliance. So I had a heavy heart when he joined City, but his arrivalcombined with that of Jose Mourinho at Unitedelevatedfootball in Manchester to a higher profile than ever.This is the last of these nine scheduled Pep & Jose Chronicles. I started the first back in August, talking about how the interest in Manchester football had been higher than I'd ever known, with the best newspapers in the world sending their correspondents to the city, not only to write about football but the city of Manchester itself, the rainy birthplace of the industrial revolution, the suffragettes, the world's first computer and a musical history that allowed the city to punch well above its cultural demographic, achievements Longfella celebrated in his tribute poem "This Is the Place," which has gone around the world since Monday.Guardiola and Mourinho, football's two most famous coaches, gave them the hook, the journalistic angle, yet the season didn't go as expected for United or City. The title race between the two never materialised. All those polls where Reds and Blues said they'd finish first and second look way off. United finished 24 points behind the champions, Chelsea. That's a vast margin. City were 15 points behind Conte's team.United were sixth for most of the season, a position nowhere near good enough given their status, outlay and talent. Their style of football hasn't impressed, eitherat least since January, ironically when the song about Jose playing the way United should took off.There have been moments, there are for every club in any football season. April's home win against Chelsea showed Mourinho can still be a tactical master, while the away win at Celta Vigo, who beat Barcelona and Real Madrid this season, demonstrated United's athletic and technical superiority in a big European match. There were no grumbles from fans as Mourinho became the first United manager in history to lift a trophy, the EFL Cup, in his first season or when the Community Shield was carried out of Wembley Stadiumin a big wooden box by United's security in August, but sixth is sixth.Guardiola has found it surprisingly tough this season, as City finished third and trophyless. He told friends that three of his worst games as a coach have been this campaign, yet he remains fascinated by the facets and nuances of English football, the fans who've given him the first song of his career. A fascination will not be enough. He needs results, the type which Monaco got when they knocked City out of the Champions League.But the man from rural Catalonia is enjoying life in Manchester. As are his family. They've made concrete plans to stay in the city and have fully integrated into Mancunian life. On Monday, his wife, Cristina, and two of their daughters attended the Ariana Grande concert at Manchester Arena, where a coward blew himself up as young, innocent people left after seeing their hero.On Tuesday, Guardiola tweeted: "Shocked. Can't believe what happened last night. My deepest condolences to the families and friends of the victims. I love Manchester."Mourinho added his own words. A religious, compassionate man who told me this season: "I go to the church, but I never ask for football. It's always the same: my family, health, the world, poor people. I don't think it's fair to go there and to ask him: 'Give me a hand with my next game.' He has too many things to worry about, so I never go with that intention."After the massacre in Manchester, he said: "We cannot take out of our minds and hearts the victims and their families, but I know the people of Manchester will pull together as one."Both United and City have jointly pledged to donate 1 million to the We Love Manchester emergency fund. Yaya Toure and the Wayne Rooney Foundation have also pledged large sums separately.They will, but no words, no hashtags or banners urging unity or defiancewill bring back loved ones. Shortly after United won in Stockholm, City's official account tweeted #ACityUnited in red and blue above the badges of both clubs. It was liked 143,000 times within 12 hours, over three times the number any tweet sent by Manchester United's much larger Twitter account to celebrate the success.City's sentiment was as positive and well-meaning as when City fans paid their impeccable silent respects at Old Trafford around the 50th anniversary of the Munich air disasterthough don't expect the enmity between fans to vanish. Enough fans thrive off it and want it to continue. Football rivalry is a warped, contradictory, hypocritical minefield, but fans of both clubs were affected.By Wednesday, more stories were filtering through about the attack. On the cobbled streets of Stockholm's Gamla stan old town, a grafterMancunian parlance for street sellercalled Dirty Neck sold half-and-half United and Ajax scarves for 100 kroner. Fans of both clubs bought them, plus American tourists curious as to why there were thousands of people in red and white. Dirty Neck is from Gorton, a working-class area two miles east of central Manchester,which he describes as a City area."Paul Clarke was at the arena," he said. "Broke his legs. Got some shrapnel in his neck and broke an arm too. Better than we first feared. He would have been here today."Fans spoke about the attack, but what was there to say that they were comfortable with in the Stockholm sun' They'd come to indulge their passion and watch their team, to have a good time. Though it's hardly a panacea for society's ills, football has long been a release from the drudgery and depression of everyday life. Fans wanted to have a good time, and they did. The players did too.Mourinho has a lot on his mind. He knows he has to bring in new players and is advanced in his preparations to do this. He hopes his targets will become easier with the carrot of Champions League football. Everything is not set in stone, but there are indications, fragments of circumstantial evidence that the transfer junkies feed off. Ibrahimovic has not renewed the lease on his private box at Old Trafford, while Luke Shaw has. Antoine Griezmann has been dropping hints about a move to England's north-west.The close season will be packed with conjecture and speculation as England's richest clubs compete for the best players on the planetwell, the ones below the Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo class. Both Manchester's Iberian managers are expected to stay next season, but both will also be expected to make significant improvements on their league positions next term. If they don't, there will be serious pressure on their positions.Men brought in as winners have to win, but they have time to reflect and recharge now that the football season is over.As at the start of the campaign, the best newspapers on the planet are sending their correspondents to Manchester. Journalists who know I'm from the city started to call on Tuesday morning. Could I, perhaps, set them along the right road to speak to someone who could help with their story' Would I know anyone who knew anything about the man who detonated the bomb, who is said to have been a United fan'Before I got into the Friends Arena, there was another message from Chris. "It's not a day for celebrating a football win, but the United fans will know that, and the atmosphere will be sombre. Put Manchester on the map for the right reasons. We're cut from the same cloth, just a different colour. See you in Houston."Houston is where United and City meet in July in a friendly game, when it all starts again. United we stand.
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