Two goals in ten minutes, then nothing. Shea Lacey on 8, set up by Youri Tielemans, Mason Mount on 10. Then Charalampos Kostoulas on 45+1 after a pass from Jaouen Hadjam, Pascal Gross on 65, and Maxim De Cuyper on 70. Brighton win 3-2. Tielemans, captain, played the whole match.
Marcel watched the end without getting out of his chair.
A man comes on in the second half and wins the cup tie. In 1980 we had two substitutes, one of them a goalkeeper, and we kept them for injuries. I’m not against progress. I’m against this progress.
He has a second grievance, an older one. The competition carries a sponsor’s name, and Marcel does not say it. He says the League Cup, the way he says Parc Astrid and the Heysel. “The rest is advertising,” he said, folding his weekly paper.
He also notes the eight changes Michael Carrick made to his starting eleven, with Bruno Fernandes on the bench and Karl Darlow in goal for his first official appearance for United. In his day, he says, you played the cup with your team, and if you lost, you lost with the good ones.
Tielemans told Walfoot: “I think we started very well. We started very positively. Then we conceded that goal before half-time and we lost our rhythm a bit.” On the armband: “Yes, clearly, it’s a moment I’m very proud of. But in the end we don’t win, so I’m very disappointed with the result.”
A Belgian captain at Old Trafford, that’s good. A Belgian off the bench who knocks them out, that’s the times. And the next match is a Sunday at half past five. Sunday at three o’clock, that was Sunday.
That next match is against Fulham, Sunday at 17:30, in the Premier League. De Cuyper was still playing for Club Brugge before Brighton.
It’s true, we checked: DH Les Sports+.
