Even now it still happens on a daily basis. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer
quickly discovered that, when you have scored the winning goal in a
Champions League final, there will never be a shortage of people
wanting to remind you about it. Grown men clasp his hand and
bearhug him. Nearly always he can guess what they are going to
say.
"They say, 'Thanks for giving me the best night of my life'," he
says. "Then they usually add, 'but please don't tell my wife.'
That's the comment they always come up with - 'It was even better
than my wedding night' - and after a while you actually start
believing it.
"You come to understand that it was a great, great night for
many, many people. I didn't realise that at the time. I just played
a game, won a game. But over time you realise just how big a moment
it was."
It is nine years since Solskjaer jabbed out his right foot to
score the most famous goal in Manchester United's history. In Sir
Alex Ferguson's office there is a framed copy of Clive Tyldesley's
television commentary throughout those three crazy minutes of
stoppage-time, culminating in the immortal line: "And Solskjaer has
done it!" But the goalscorer himself is less showy. There are few
memorabilia at his house in Cheshire and he says he has never
watched the game against Bayern Munich from start to finish, only
the final 15 minutes on one occasion with his parents in
Norway.
He has, however, seen the winning goal "maybe a thousand times"
and his eyes sparkle as he remembers the part of his anatomy that
changed his life for ever. "My big toe," he says. "I've scored a
lot of goals. But the one that night was just a lucky moment.
Ninety-nine times out of 100 it would have gone into the hands of
[Oliver] Kahn or on the head of the guy on the line."
Solskjaer, as was so often the case, had been a substitute that
night at Camp Nou. "At half-time," he recalls, "the manager went
over to Teddy Sheringham to tell him to get ready to come on. I was
in the background, hoping that he would come over to me, too. But
he didn't. He just had a chat with everyone to say we should leave
with no regrets: 'If we walk out of here losing, you have to walk
past that cup without touching it. You can't touch it. That's the
worst feeling in football. Just don't let yourselves down and give
100%.'"
The most prolific substitute in football was on the bench for
another 35 minutes before Ferguson finally gave him the nod. "I was
just warming up and warming up, waiting and waiting and trying to
catch his eye. I was a bit - not frustrated but 'why don't you put
me on?'"
Solskjaer remembers being "springy" as he sprinted on. "That was
always a good sign," he says. "I can see from the way I ran on that
I thought I was going to score. I knew something would happen. I'd
even phoned my best mate that afternoon to tell him. He had a night
shift - he's a nurse in Trondheim - and was due to start at 10
o'clock [nine o'clock English time] so he didn't think he would see
the last half-hour. But I made sure he got someone to step in for
him. I said to him: 'Something big is going to happen
tonight.'"
He admits that United, 1-0 down, were fortunate still to be in
the game when he came on with 10 minutes to go. "We have to be
honest and say that Bayern Munich were the better team, at least
for 85 minutes. We rode our luck as they hit the crossbar, hit the
post. We never had a strike on target for 80 minutes."
But then the game turned upside-down. "When Teddy equalised
everyone ran to him to celebrate, except me," says Solskjaer. "I
ran straight back to the half-way line. I was thinking, 'Right,
extra-time, this is something I'm going to savour, learn from,
enjoy.' And then I ruined it, I suppose."
His celebratory knee-slide was subsequently reported to have
caused the cartilage injury that ended his career. "That's a myth,"
he says. "I did get a medial ligament injury but that's nothing in
football terms - three weeks, maybe. I didn't feel it, though. My
mind was blank. I've seen it on television as I was running down
there, sliding, but I cannot remember what I was thinking."
