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Nostalgia
In the early 2000s, Arsenal and Manchester United shared one of the greatest rivalries in world football.
You can forget about the generosity of Marcus Rashford and the joyous celebrations of Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, which were characterized by Patrick Vieira and Roy Keane closing the trumpets on and off the field.
The two teams seemed to really hate each other, and it all peaked in 2003, when Ruud van Nistelrooy missed the penalty that could have stopped the Gunners’ Invincibles career.
Accumulation
It was 0-0 in an incredibly tense affair, as these games always were, and both teams were playing aggressively, with most of the players looking to pull lumps out of the opposition or send them off.
Van Nistelrooy was interested in doing both. Vieira already had a yellow card for the accumulation of fouls when the ball floated at an antagonistic distance from both the French and the Dutch.
Van Nistelrooy took the opportunity to hit his opponent with one, and at the same time he wound it up, jumped on the back of the Arsenal captain and kicked him mischievously.
Vieira didn’t have such subtlety about him, and his retaliatory kick, which he didn’t even land, was immediately spotted by the referee, aided by the United man’s dramatic jump back, and he quickly received his marching orders.
Jens Lehmann, Vieira and all the other men in yellow were furious with the forward, but things settled down pretty quickly … for now.
READ: Seven reasons why Patrick Vieira will always be an Arsenal legend
The great incident
Gary Neville launched a mocking cross from deep, inviting United’s attackers to the end, while Arsenal were left struggling in relative desperation to keep a clean sheet.
Among all this, Diego Forlán fell to the ground due to pressure from Martin Keown and the referee sanctioned a penalty to those in red, which was to be executed by Van Nistelrooy.
Lehmann did all he could to dissuade the Dutch international, crossing his line laterally in the hope that the forward would not put the ball into the back of the net.
However, Van Nistelrooy seemed confident before hitting the ball, as he cleaned his mouth, prepared himself, took the run with authority, and absolutely hit the ball.
However, that confident gaze soon turned to one of disbelief, as he watched the ball crash off the crossbar and crash into the ground before clearing the field.
READ: A tribute to Ruud van Nistelrooy and the art of goalkeeping
The consequences
After that moment with Vieira, Van Nistelrooy was very wrong if he thought they would let him lick his wounds on the Old Trafford pitch in peace, as Keown gave him a piece of his mind.
That only got more intense once the final whistle sounded and virtually the entire Arsenal team decided to join in.
Lauren started things off by shoving a knee into her back, before Keown jumped up to hit the striker with a missing arm on the way down, yelling at him the entire time.
In a second there were five or six yellow jerseys around him, all trying to get close enough to push him off. As Keane grabbed his teammate, Cristiano Ronaldo came back in, trying to take on all of Arsenal’s men at once.
Ruud van Nistelrooy missed a penalty and Martin Keown got in his face after the match sums up the rivalry between Manchester United and Arsenal! #MUNARDS pic.twitter.com/nBZ2XkzkOm
– Daily football (@footballdaily) Sep 30, 2019
The commotion did not last long, however, as Van Nistelrooy raced through the tunnel and Arsenal went off to celebrate their hard-fought point with visiting fans.
If all of this happened now, it would be considered embarrassing, but this turn of events came to encapsulate the hatred that this rivalry absorbed in that time period.
There will also be plenty of fans, most of them probably from Arsenal’s persuasion, who may even see this as one of the best moments of the rivalry.
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