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There has been a tradition in European football where the newly crowned champions are given a guard of honour with their excellence throughout the season acknowledged by the other teams. There are talks over Liverpool giving the Blues a guard of honour this Sunday when the two sides square up at the Stamford Bridge.
This is not a first instance when a top rival has given a guard of honor to the newly crowned champions. Top clubs like Manchester United and Barcelona too have done so in the recent past. Here are five instances where a top club has given a guard of honor to their arch rival.
5) Rangers FC to Hearts FC – 2014/15
Rangers FC – a name that has been maligned far enough due to off the pitch issues. From being a powerhouse of Scottish football to being reduced to a side fighting promotion in the second division, a lot of water has flown under the bridge at the Ibrox.
The Old Firm side had possibly the worst moment in its history when they gave Hearts FC a guard of honour last month. Hearts have won the Scottish Championship comprehensively and are leading second-placed Hibernian by 23 points. Rangers are in third place three points adrift of Hibernian. They will play Queen of South in the Premiership qualification playoffs this weekend.
Hearts have been the best side in the Championship by a country mile as they have dropped only 12 points the entire season. Rangers, on the other hand, have been inconsistent but the Ibrox boys have made steady progress under the new found leadership of Stuart McCall.
The former Motherwell manager has transformed this disjointed Rangers side as they had a strong finish to the season. They not only mauled the new champions Hearts this past week which marks their resurgence under McCall.
4) Manchester United to Chelsea – 2004/05
Jose Mourinho announced his arrival to English shores with an arrogant swagger which baffled many observers of the game. He won two league titles in as many seasons in England which severely challenged the duopoly of Manchester United and Arsenal in the early part of the millennium.
Chelsea took the league status quo by the scruff of its neck as they ran riot throughout the season. Manchester United had their lowest ever finish in the Premier League era (at the time) when they finished third behind Arsenal.
United had to give the acrimonious guard of honor to the newly crowned champions Chelsea at Old Trafford. The Blues continued their imperial run of form as they humbled the Red Devils 3-1, thus rubbing more salt into their wounds. But this humiliation wasn’t going to deter the wily Scottish manager Sir Alex Ferguson, who accepted the challenge as he thundered these words in his autobiography,
“When, on May 10, 2005, we assembled a guard of honour for Chelsea, the new champions, at our ground, I had no intention of surrendering to Abramovich’s wealth in the months to come,” said Ferguson.
He cited that it was a big moment for Chelsea, but United had to mend their ways of being notoriously slow starters if they were to challenge Chelsea for the Premiership.
“Psychologically that was a big moment for Chelsea. They had won the League for the first time in half a century and could see themselves in another light. A lesson we took on board was that slow starts could no longer be tolerated if we were to face Chelsea, our big new challengers.”
The determination and will to succeed in Sir Alex’s words could not be ignored as it marked the beginning of a new rivalry between Chelsea and Manchester United.
3) Chelsea to Manchester United – 2006/07
After being mauled by Chelsea for two successive seasons, the perennial champions Manchester United roared back in style. They laid the gauntlet for others to follow and their determination to end Chelsea’s stranglehold on the league formed the crux of the Reds’ revival.
The rise of two young superstars at Old Trafford was one of the major reasons for the successful title charge as Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo announced them to the world as the next big thing in the world football. United had wrapped up the title with two games to spare after Chelsea’s inability to get a positive result at the Emirates. They travelled to Chelsea as the newly crowned champions, winning their ninth title in 15 years of the Premier League era.
Chelsea were made to repay the favour which they got from their northern rivals a couple of seasons ago at Old Trafford. Sir Alex Ferguson stayed true to his words as he dared the Russian oligarch with yet another title victory. Sir Alex didn’t shy away from returning the humiliation he faced with suitable interest as he fielded an untested side which featured the likes of Fangzhou Dong, Chris Eagles and Kieran Lee. One didn’t need rocket-science to understand what Sir Alex wanted to convey.
Such was the audacity of his team selection that one pundit in the box couldn’t hold back his tongue in the commentators box as he chided Manchester United’s team selection.
“John Terry's been made to look an idiot,” he said. The same pundit even blasted Sir Alex by saying that he was making a mockery of Chelsea’s guard of honour.
The match ended in a drab 0-0 draw yet the damage had already been done by then.
2) Arsenal to Manchester United – 2012/13
Arsenal and Manchester United are two teams who have battled like gladiators season after season for glory of having domestic superiority at the end of the season, especially in the Premier League era. The rivalry stems back to late nineties, 1997 to be precise, when Arsene Wenger’s revolution upset the Sir Alex Ferguson’s title winning machine by clinching the title by coming from behind after a splendid second half of the season. From then on, both the teams have been engrossed in many titanic battles.
In the 2012/13 season, Manchester United won the EPL title in a canter as they wrapped up the league in April. This was the first instance in the Premier League when the title was wrapped up in April since Jose Mourinho’s Chelsea took the league by storm in 2005/06. Sir Alex, in his last season at United, made sure that he graced the retirement on a high and that too in some style!
After comfortably sealing the league title, United travelled to North London on 28 April and Arsene Wenger confirmed that his team would abide by the rules and offer their bitter rivals a guard of honour. The highlight of the season and United’s stellar title win was majorly due to the signing of former Arsenal captain and Premier League’s Golden Boot winner, Robin van Persie.
There was a strong sense of bitterness lingering in North London after their talisman made the switch and also won the league title. Arsenal fans did not shy away from expressing their dissent as they continuously booed Van Persie. But he silenced them by earning and converting a penalty.
1) Barcelona to Real Madrid – 2007/08
Real Madrid returned to the pinnacle of Spanish football by winning the league title in thrilling fashion by pipping arch rivals FC Barcelona on a better head-to-head record in the 2006/07 season. Los Blancos took the insult a notch higher in the following season where they ran away with the league title.
Real Madrid won the league with a healthy gap of eight points over the second placed Villareal. Barcelona had a miserable season and finished third – 18 points off the leaders. But what compounded La Blaugrana’s misery was the greatest possible insult to any Catalan and that is to give Madrid a champions’ guard of honour, that too in enemy territory, at the Santiago Bernabeu.
Barca were forced to give Bernd Schuster’s Real Madrid a guard of honour in the 152nd El Clasico when both the sides faced each other in the 36th game of the season. Real entered the tie after comfortably sealing the league title the preceding week and made their rivals pay not only with a guard of honor but also with a humiliating 4-1 defeat.
Schuster ecstatically claimed that they wanted to celebrate in style as said, "We wanted to celebrate the title with our fans and play a great game and we did that," Schuster told a news conference. "The attitude of the players was superb."
