While the shocking and reprehensible 6-1 scoreline would make every public social joint and office in the entire city an undisputed Manchester-City-kind-of-Blue heaven for the ensuing weeks or even months, there was still a pervading sense of deep, mutual respect among the players and staff of both teams.
Alex Ferguson, well-known for his penchant for respecting anyone with the gumption to stand up to his feistiness and is able to prove their mettle, promptly welcomed Mancini into his office for a glass of Italian vino, and the two men carried on with their polite tête-a-tête, animatedly discussing all and sundry except the massacre that had just taken place on the pitch.
Apparently, the Reds boss had already paid a visit earlier before that to a heavily-distraught United dressing room and told his players in no uncertain terms that they had “disgraced” themselves and the club.
Palpably shocked by the result, he said in the aftermath: “It was our worst ever day. It’s the worst result in my history, ever. I’m shattered, I can’t believe it. It was an incredible disappointment, but we will react, no question about that.
“It’s a perfect result for us to react to. There is a lot of embarrassment in the dressing room — and quite rightly so — and that will make an impact. You have to recover. The history of Man United is ‘another day’ and we will recover.”
But years later Fergie wrote, with albeit some intent to alter history in the hope of possibly re-inventing it for posterity: “The irony of it was that for most of the game we outplayed them. In retrospect, we should have just bolted the door and avoided the embarrassment of the terrible newspaper headlines.”
The celebration was understandably riotous in the City dressing room post-match, with the scene replicated in more than a couple of Manchester pubs and nightclubs that night, but that was where the celebrations wee confined to tacitly.
It was an unspoken code not to be violated even when the players from both teams met up in the following weeks either locally or on international duty three weeks afterwards. The totally taboo subject never come up.
“That’s not a thing you do,” said Joleon Lescott. “At the time we won 6-1, they were champions so there was no banter to be had. There was just respect.
“We never spoke about club football when we went away, we were there to do a job for England. There was mutual respect.
“We knew we weren’t as big as that group of players at that club at that time. We knew that was the reality of where Man City was and where we were as a team at that time. There wasn’t any banter to be had, to be honest.”
Ten years down the road, the matter is still taboo as far as Lescott is concerned when he does TV work with Rio Ferdinand: “There’s mutual respect to what we do. No one intentionally loses 6-1.
“I work with Rio regularly and it’s never come up. It will never come up. The fact that we won the league will come up – that’s the banter.
“But the details of how you win and stuff, no. There’s great respect for our profession. I’ve got friends that I’ll take the mick out of! Professionals? No.”
Micah Richards says that official revenge for City came at the end of the season when, with the title sitting snug in the bag, the City stars were able to exact vengeance against United after the latter’s lads had flaunted their previous season’s 2010-11 title win at regular haunts frequented by footballers in the city.
“Rio, I love him, he’s a great guy, but I remember the season before, they all went out to a night at Panacea and they all had their Premier League medals around their neck,” he said.
“That moment just stuck in my mind – I was thinking ‘You’re Rio Ferdinand, you’re a great player, everyone knows you’re great and you’re going to win everything, you don’t need to come in the club with your medals on’.
“It stuck in my mind and, as soon as we won the league, all the Man City boys did exactly the same. We went out with all our medals and we were like, f*** you!”
The epiphanic euphoria – real as it was ecstatic – was mixed with a strange sense of disbelief among the City fans, after all the years of suppression and hurt they had been subjected to under the disdainful snobbery of their city rivals. It was a sylvan dreamland more surreal, than real, to them, something intangible existing only in the realm of the impossible.
And for one totally hardcore, avid Blues supporter, who had happened to be on holiday in France and had no access to the game when it was being played out, the outcome came as something of a very rude shock.
The following is how City fan Sean Riley recounts the tale as vividly as he recalls the events surrounding it where his pal vacationing in France was concerned.
Sean’s first derby was the one in 1974 when Denis Law’s stylish back-heeled winner memorably underlined United’s relegation. Since then he has not missed an Old Trafford derby since, having had to wait for 34 years to see his beloved Blues win there again.
He clearly recalls taking the phone call from his City-besotted pal John Dalton from the latter’s holiday resort in France that clearly demonstrated just how much those three decades of regular beatings by rivals United had instilled a hardened defeatist attitude into even the most loyal of Blues supporters.
John apparently made his call anxiously from a bar somewhere in Normandy, eager to keep tabs with what had happened in the derby, having had no access to radio or TV. He had become frustrated and increasingly agitated by Sean’s failure to answer his repeated texts.
“I explained to him that I don’t check my phone during the game, but his next words were – and I’ll never forget this as long as I live – ‘What was the score?’ “Despite the din in the car, where my pals Wilky, Mike, Darren and Phil were in full voice, I told him it had been 6-1,” recalls Sean.
“I can’t share the expletives which came straight back down the line, suffice to say John was prepared for the fact that we might have got beaten, but 6-1 was just too much to bear.
“We all shouted down my phone, ‘No John, we won 6-1!’
“More expletives followed, as John begged us to stop winding him up, he asked us to confirm the score again. We repeated 6-1 to City, and had to swear on our families’ lives that we were telling the truth.”
Those who are not City fans would never be able to understand, or even begin to imagine, the insufferable ordeal that the purest of Blues loyalists had all been subjected to the armageddon of ‘The 6-1’ and what this historical turning point for them meant. The joy of the moment, indescribable yet inordinately real, for long-suffering Blues was followed seven months later by the almost decadently-rich realisation that the massive margin of victory not only won them bragging rights, but it had also won them the highest league honors.
Sean again remembers this only too well: “I well remember Fergie saying after the derby how he was annoyed not because United had lost it, he just couldn’t understand why his players didn’t keep it tight, as titles can be won and lost if goals for and goals conceded comes into the equation, and of course it did.
“That derby win, more than any other, was instrumental in helping shift the balance of power over to the east end of the Mancunian Way.
“To all the players who made it possible, and of course Roberto Mancini, we will eternally be grateful for what you did that day. Thank you.”
Now perhaps all those who are not looped into the full history, context and significance of the Manchester derby can better understand the humiliation that United, both club and supporters, had to suffer when the most recently played out derby reduced the Reds in front of an equally-tortured Old Trafford home crowd to a horror show, being totally out-classed, out-strategised and out-played by their clearly superior City arch-rivals – who didn’t even seem to be trying too hard to win.