Chelsea seek to tear up the script as history beckons for United

0 Comments | AFP, May, 2008

MOSCOW (AFP) — The first all-English final of the Champions League was always going to be a dramatic affair.

But it would have been hard to predict an encounter quite as rich in sub-plots as Wednesday's meeting between Manchester United and Chelsea at Moscow's Luzhniki Stadium.

Looming largest of all in the backdrop to the 2008 edition of club football's biggest match is the sense of history weighing down on United as they bid to claim the club's third European Cup in a year that has marked both the 50th anniversary of the Munich air disaster as well as 40 years since they became the first English club to lift the trophy.

For Chelsea it is the uncertainty over the future of their manager, Avram Grant, and several of their leading players, that has made the...