Premier League, Brighton-United 1-0: De Zerbi sees Europe

At the last breath. Brighton knocked Manchester United 1-0 down with a 99th-minute Alexis Mac Allister penalty to move up to 6th place, one point clear of Tottenham and Aston Villa who however played two games more. From there, De Zerbi sees Europe even closer: it would be a historic first time for the seagulls, one that the team is deserving of with victories like this too. Yes, because despite having caught it in extremis, the seagulls deserved this victory, playing better and putting United down for the whole second half. Ten Hag’s team is knocked out after 5 games (they had won 4) and slow down their race to third place, but in the second half they went down and in the final they were saved by De Gea, who against Mac Allister’s penalty, however, had no more miracles.

The keys

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Brighton are confirmed to be great because they also manage to make up for absences. De Zerbi didn’t have the fundamentals Gross and Veltman, the last entries in a long list of unavailable, and Caicedo came up with right-back receiving a fantastic performance from the Ecuadorian who usually plays the half-back. The whole team played great (the exception is Mitoma, still bad against Wan Bissaka who had already sent him into crisis two weeks ago in the FA Cup semi-final), confirming that it is the system in which Brighton move really the difference. The one who transformed an excellent team into an exceptional one, one that celebrated 9th place last year as its best result ever in the Premier League, dreaming of Europe and deserving of conquering it. United were well placed on the pitch in the first half, with Ten Hag switching from their dogmatic 4-2-3-1 to a 4-1-4-1 with Fred and Bruno Fernandes pressing Brighton’s halfbacks, but in the second half he was went under, gradually cashing in without being able to react, with Rashford, Martial and Antony impalpable ahead, especially in the second half. And the Red Devils deserved the loss.

The match

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Only the goal is missing in a good first half, lively and with lots of emotions, opened by a chance for Antony after just 2′ and closed after 5′ of added time with Enciso who tries the magic from outside without framing the goal. The second half restarts from 0-0, with the more lively Brighton who, however, does not find the goal. In the quarter of an hour De Zerbi loses Buonanotte due to injury and replaces him with March, the seagulls mount the assault and put United on the ropes, coming close to scoring several times. A penalty is needed to unlock, after De Gea held the 0-0 with a couple of sensational saves: in the 95th minute Shaw touches his hand in the area by jumping from a corner and the referee, after seeing him again on the Var monitor on the sideline, indicates the diskette. Mac Allister is very cold and displaces De Gea. And Brighton sees Europe.