By Yemi Babalola Lagos, Nigeria
Manchester united would take on Dutch side, Ajax in the Europa league final later tonight in Stockholm, at the Friends arena in Sweden. The match would be refereed by Slovenian Damir Skomina and would kick-off 7:45pm Nigerian time. The match is coming up two days after the Manchester terrorist attack at the Manchester arena which has seen loss of lives and injuries.
Football’s European-governing body, UEFA have confirmed the Europa League final will go ahead as scheduled. Going into this finals, United has never won the Europa league title nor the UEFA cup, which existed before it, since its inception, they were the first team in England to win the European cup in 1968, 1999 and 2008, also they won the defunct European Cup Winners’ Cup in 1991.
With this history looming over United, when they file out against Ajax tonight they would be hoping they could upstage one of Europe’s youngest squads to grace this level of the competition. Ajax themselves are no minions as they are one of the only four clubs to have won all three European trophies – alongside Chelsea, Juventus and Bayern Munich.
However, they last lifted a continental silverware in 1995, when they defeated AC Milan to win the UEFA Champions League. Tonight’s final will be United’s 64th game of the season in all competitions, which is higher than Ajax’s 56 games played this season. United would be without some key players like Eric Baily who picked up a red card in the second leg of their semi-finals against Celta Vigo at the old Trafford.
Homeboy Zlatan Ibrahimovic is likely to miss this also, due to his recuperation from the surgery he had few weeks back. While, Ajax on their part, would be without left-back Nick Viergever who is also serving a ban. Apart from never winning this title before now, another motivation for United going into this final is that this is also Manchester United’s only chance to qualify for the UEFA Champions League next season as they finished 6th in the English Premier League season that ended on Sunday.
