CAMBRIDGE, England -- "If you're going to Old Trafford clap your hands," sang a rowdy group of Cambridge United supporters among the last to spill out of the Abbey Stadium on Friday night. Their voices were swelled by their team's huge achievement.
As the home of Cambridge University, one of British education's highest and most venerable seats of learning, the East Anglian city's usual sports are punting down the River Cam, or cycling, the chosen mode of transport for the 18,000 students who swell its population during term time. Friday, however, was when Cambridge became a football city for one night only. And Manchester United could depart with only the embarrassment of never truly outplaying the lowest-ranked team left in the FA Cup.
A 0-0 draw that thrilled until the very last seconds, it had been a match to prove the competition's status as the greatest leveller of all. The home team, roared on by a crowd that lowered its volume only as late tension mounted, fought like dogs, as United's superstars struggled in the muck and nettles of a stadium for which one point of entry involves crossing a cattle grid.
Around 8,000 fans will be able to visit Manchester the week after next, in a replay that Cambridge manager Richard Money admitted chairman Dave Doggett will have craved. "I'm sure he wouldn't have been very happy if we had scored in the second half, with five minutes to go, let's put it that way," joked Money, aptly nicknamed "Dickie Dosh" among those in the game.
"When you get back in the dressing room, you just think of what it means to so many people," Money said, his eyes beginning to mist over as the achievement sank in. "This club has been in the doldrums, for 10 years out of the Football League, and suddenly we are taking everybody back to Old Trafford. It's incredible."
His players, four of whom share a townhouse together, by contrast to the maximum-security walled gardens of the Cheshire mansions in which Friday's visitors reside, head to the largest club stadium in Britain, having been told they would have to pay the 40-pound cost of swapping shirts with their superstar opponents.
"Not one player asked me if they could swap," Money said. "We might buy them one now, though."
The Abbey is a prosaic place, its four stands not reaching or matching each other. Great gaps between them allow an icy wind to blow off Cambridgeshire's Fenlands, flat terrain that makes for a bitterly cold winter. The grand spires and architecture dating back to the Middle Ages that dot the centre of town are a strata away from the rather less well-heeled outskirt that Cambridge United calls home.
Back in the centre, public houses were showing the match to those who could not land one of the 8,000 tickets. The FA Cup, like cycling's Tour de France, retains the ability to alter a town's psyche while it builds up to the big day. Now the town's folk will decamp to the industrial cityscape that Manchester United call home, their civic heroes having raised heavy doubts against Louis van Gaal's regime.
"We didn't score and I have to give also the credit to this club, of course, because Cambridge United played very well, very well organised, with the heart," said Van Gaal. "They have fought 'til the end. We are still in the cup and that's the most important thing. I've seen lots of times big clubs losing against such opponents."
It was a result to resemble Sir Alex Ferguson's worst results in the competition. In 2005, non-league Exeter City drew 0-0 at Old Trafford, and the following year, Burton Albion similarly took United back to their home. In this competition, such things happen, though Van Gaal reached for somewhat unnecessary excuses that made little sense in the light of a game played in a good, honest spirit.
"Every aspect of a match is against us," Van Gaal said, his explanation for a performance especially barren in the first half. "We have to come here, the pitch is not so good. ... Then you have seen the referee. It's always the same. Everywhere I have coached these games -- and I have coached them also with other clubs -- it's always the same."
A usual rule of thumb in the FA Cup is that minnows get one chance to pull off a giant-killing, and the giant then eases through. Cambridge, whatever happens in Manchester, can be proud of disrupting a billionaire opponent's path to the only trophy they have a realistic chance of winning.
"No," smirked Money when asked if he believed his team might win the replay. "I don't, but you never know. We've said in the dressing room you're going to Old Trafford. Who cares what happens? Just go and enjoy it, soak it in. Whatever happens, happens."
