Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has something to show us. He opens his phone. No, the code isn’t 260599. Heading straight to his photos app, he asks us “2019?” and proceeds to scroll back through the pictures. Most from recent years are of his family. Smiling faces of his three children in smiley places – hot and cold. He’s at stadiums in Milan, Naples and Dortmund. There are pictures of mountains, water and ice in Norway. The former Manchester United player and manager learned to sail before he turned 50 last year, coaches his son’s junior football team and, unlike the previous quarter of a century, lives a quiet life in his hometown of Kristiansund on Norway’s stunning Atlantic coast.
“March 2019?” he asks, and he’s not about to refer to his picture on the front cover of that month’s FourFourTwo. He’s swiped through years as a Manchester United manager, but there are almost no flashes of red shirts in the pictures. This was a man who managed and wasn’t one for photos. He’s the last person to be active on social media, but on March 6, 2019, he decided to get his phone out and film his players for the one and only time.
“Here,” he says, as he presses play on a video. The images show the away dressing room inside the Parc des Princes in Paris. The sounds are his players singing ‘Ole’s at the wheel’, to the Stone Roses’ Waterfall: “Tell me how good does it feel? We’ve got Sanchez, Paul Pogba and Fred, Marcus Rashford is Manc born and bred.” Eric Bailly is the most enthusiastic dancer, standing on a massage table giving it some and kicking pizza boxes. Eric Cantona and Sir Alex Ferguson have come down from the stands.
And why not? United have recovered from a home defeat against PSG in the last 16 first leg at Old Trafford, beating Thomas Tuchel’s side 3-1 away with a 94th-minute Rashford penalty in front of 3,000 away followers in the Parisian rain. The end of that game remains the most exhilarating moment of the post-Ferguson years. It didn’t lead to a trophy – Solskjaer’s failure to win any silverware in nearly three years of management was a major reason he didn’t keep his job – but that young, injury-hit United performance in pink won’t be forgotten.
“One special night in Paris made me become the permanent United manager,” he tells FFT. “We lost the first leg 2-0 at home. PSG are a difficult team, a very good team, but there was always something where I felt we could beat them in Paris. Maybe it was too much confidence on their part.
“I knew that
