Michael Carrick eyes Champions League glory with Man United

Michael Carrick took Manchester United back into the Champions League on Thursday night against Sabah, the competition's anthem sounding at Old Trafford for the first time since 2023. The manager who led the return once won the trophy as a player, and he was asked what that night still means to him.

«As a one-off feeling and instant kind of emotion, definitely winning the Champions League is the best feeling I've been lucky enough to have as a footballer,».

He added a line that read as more than a passing aside. "It would be nice someday to feel that again," Carrick said, and there was ambition in it, a sense of a manager who remembers what United used to be and pictures what it could be once more.

Sabah, the champions of Azerbaijan, are a modest opener by the standards of a competition where Carrick faced Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Real Madrid and Milan as a player. He called it "a magical competition" and said United "are capable of doing some really good things" in it, insisting the club had not come merely to enjoy the occasion but "to do business and go as far as we possibly can".

United go in as strong favourites, priced at -900 against Sabah's +2200, with the draw at +900. Anything short of a comfortable win invites scrutiny of Carrick so soon after the interim tag was removed, particularly after a draw against Everton in the last league fixture. Sabah's own run to Old Trafford is only nine years in the making for a club that had to come through the first qualifying round to get there, under Lithuanian manager Valdas Dambrauskas.

He set his ambitions in Europe against that.

A big win would settle little on its own, but it would give Carrick the start he says he wants in a competition he clearly has not stopped thinking about since he last lifted it.