Cunha's Magic Sparks United's Champions League Return
Matheus Cunha stood under the Old Trafford floodlights with grass still clinging to his shirt and spoke about something Manchester United have been chasing for more than a decade: magic.
Not tactics. Not structures. Magic.
The Brazilian had just scored the opener in a wild 3-2 win over Liverpool, a result that did far more than bruise their greatest rivals. It sealed United’s return to the Champions League with three games to spare, a target that felt distant when Ruben Amorim was dismissed in January and the season seemed to be drifting towards another post-Ferguson shrug.
At the centre of the revival stands Michael Carrick, the quiet midfielder of old now the unlikely conductor of a noisy resurgence.
Carrick’s Ferguson echo
Ten wins in 14 matches. A Champions League place secured early. A team that suddenly looks like it remembers what this club is supposed to be.
Carrick has not arrived with bombast. He has arrived with detail, calm, and – in Cunha’s eyes – something deeper.
“I sat on the bench with him,” Cunha said, recalling those early conversations. “How he teaches everyone is amazing. He has the magic with these Ferguson times. Then he comes and brings it to us, teaches us how it was, to be part of everything. Then he did this.”
This. A side that had lost its way now playing with conviction and edge, dragging itself back towards the standards set by Sir Alex Ferguson, the man Carrick served so faithfully. The 44-year-old was part of the last truly great United team, lifting five Premier League titles and a Champions League. He knows what the peak looks like. He has lived it.
Cunha is convinced that matters.
“It’s amazing. He’s a pleasure. Of course, I think he deserves it.”
Deserves what is now the obvious next step: the job on a permanent basis. Results have put Carrick in pole position; the mood around the club is doing the rest.
Standards rising again
Carrick has already warned his players that the job is not done. The Champions League place was the minimum. The climb back to the top is supposed to be the mission.
United still need four more points to be certain of finishing in the top three, something they have managed only four times since Ferguson walked away in 2013. They also have a chance to close the gap on the champions to fewer than 12 points – a modest statistic on paper, but one that would mark their closest finish to the summit in the post-Ferguson era, matching Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s 2020-21 campaign.
Inside the dressing room, the players feel the weight of that responsibility.
“It’s one of the biggest privileges I have to play at this club,” Cunha said. “The Champions League without this club is not the same competition, and this club without Champions League is not same club.
“But it is not only the Champions League. We need to fight for the titles. This is the first one [step]. We could come much stronger for next season.”
The message is clear. Qualification is a step, not a destination.
Casemiro question lingers
As one Brazilian flourishes, another hovers in a strange limbo.
Casemiro’s future has become one of the subplots of United’s summer before it has even begun. The 34-year-old has spoken as if he is leaving. Carrick, when asked on Friday, reinforced that impression. It sounded final.
Cunha, who knows him well from the Brazil set-up, is not ready to close the door.
“It’s so easy to talk about him,” he said. “I know how important he is.
“He’s an amazing guy. There is a strong part of him outside the pitch. He’s so lovely and so friendly. He teaches me.
“We don’t know in the end how it is with his contract. Of course, everyone hopes there’s a little bit more. I know it’s harder than we talked about, but, in the end, you never know.”
United will change this summer. That much is guaranteed. Whether Casemiro is part of the next phase of Carrick’s rebuild remains one of the more emotional questions around Old Trafford.
Cunha’s big-stage comfort
What is not in doubt is Cunha’s own impact.
Signed from Wolves for £62.5m last summer, he arrived with a big price tag, a bigger personality and an expectation that he would not shrink in the shadow of Old Trafford’s history. He has embraced it.
His goal against Liverpool was his ninth of the season, and they have not been empty numbers. He delivered the winner at Arsenal. He delivered the winner at Chelsea. He has scored when the temperature has risen, when the noise has grown, when the pressure has felt most like the old United.
Each strike has brought with it the same familiar image: Cunha dropping into his surfing celebration. Against Liverpool, he took it up a notch, sprinting away from a pack of red shirts, diving to the turf and then springing up to “surf” in front of a delirious Stretford End.
“I’ve improved my celebration a little bit,” he said. “Every time, my friends in Brazil every time say, ‘you cannot only surf, you have to paddle and stand up on the surfboard’. I said OK, I’ll try to improve.
“It’s part of my life; to bring this into football and show everyone how happy I am to play football and surf. I have to do it.”
The joy is obvious. So is the ambition.
United have their Champions League ticket. They have a manager who carries echoes of a golden age and a forward who believes in that connection. The trophies that defined those Ferguson years are still a long way off, but for the first time in a while, Old Trafford feels like a place where magic is being taken seriously again.
