Man United gave Young Boys a reality check at the start of the Champions League campaign with a loss

BERN, Switzerland-This new look Manchester Manchester should have shown tonight in showing their Champions League credentials, but in the end it was another night to suggest that the task is more than just signing Cristiano Ronaldo.

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Despite a new goal from the Portuguese superstar, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s team lost 2-1 to Bern Boys in Bern on Tuesday. Aaron Wan-Bissakaunnecessary red card and terrible mistake Jesse Lingard during the downtime, which gave the Swiss side a late winner.

There will also be questions about Solskjaer’s tactics after the broadcast, as his decision to move to the five-man defense in the middle seemed to put pressure on him instead of fighting it.

Young Boys had 19 shots in United’s two – the last in the 25th minute – and the only surprise was that it took so long to reach the second goal. Alternate Jordan Pefok, A player of the US national team, finally got it in the final kick of the match.

The good news for Solskjaer is that there are five more games ahead of the match to support his claim that his team is ready to win the Champions League, but the Norwegian has now lost seven of his 11 matches as United manager. This was supposed to be an easy group, but not now.

“In football in general, not just in the Champions League, discipline is a huge part of the game,” Solskjaer said afterwards. “Lack of concentration, make a mistake and get a punishment, then you get it done. Aaron is usually a very, very skilled striker, one of the best in the world, but it gave us a more difficult task.

“Jesse wants to play it safe and gives the wrong pass, gives away a goal; that’s what happens in football.” Harry Hindsight “is a very good player. If Jesse gets this chance again, he flips, flips and gets the ball the other way around.

“You need 10 or 12 points [to qualify], win your home game, one away from home. We’ve lost the chance to get three points, but we have two home games next and we need to focus on those two. “

Solskjaer emphasized the new strength of his team before the trip to Switzerland and took advantage of the alternatives by bringing Victor Lindelof, Fred and Donny van de Beek to its initial configuration.

More changes could have been made to what on paper should have been United’s easiest Champions League visit, but Solskjaer won’t forget the six changes he made to his trip to Istanbul Basaksehir last season. A 2-1 loss to Turkey contributed to an early exit in the group stage, and Solskjaer can only hope that the same result here doesn’t turn out to be a bad sign.

There was no possibility of Ronaldo being left out. After scoring twice in his Newcastle match on Saturday, it took just 13 minutes to find the net here and drifted into the back to hit the ball under Young Boys goalkeeper David von Ballmoos.

It was made by a delicious pass from the left with the outside Bruno Fernandes‘right shoe. It’s a shame Solskjaer didn’t count the feeds because it was good.

It was Ronaldo’s 135th Champions League goal in a record 177th appearance in the race. It wasn’t his most beautiful, but it doesn’t matter to Solskjaer, who is desperately looking for an attacker who knows how to be in the right place at the right time, and Ronaldo has turned it into an art form. At least it was a more accurate paint attempt than the one that grabbed the carpenter during the warm-up, and Ronaldo had to jump over and make sure he wasn’t injured.

It should have marked the beginning of a nice evening for United, but all hope for it disappeared with one heavy touch of Wan-Bissaka. The ball ran from him on the hard, artificial surface of Stadion Wankdorf, and the right defender went from above to Ulisses Garcia’s ankle. Harry Maguire, Paul Pogba and Fred competed with French judge Francois Letexier, but Wan-Bissaka cannot appeal. It looked reckless in real time and got worse every time.

Solskjaer immediately changed and continued Diogo Dalot for Jadon Sancho, and United survived the last 10 minutes of the first half despite a good chance of a drop Christian Fassnacht. The wild end of the half was enough to persuade Solskjaer to change the system at half time. Raphael Varane for Van de Beek and the transition to a three-man defense. It was unfortunate for Van de Beek, who hadn’t done much wrong since the rare start.

But if the idea was to stick to what they had, it wouldn’t work. Von Ballmoos was a spectator throughout the second half and Ronaldo, isolated from the front with no runners around him, was eventually replaced.

Moumi Ngamaleu leveled the scoreboard Luke Shaw after 95 minutes, but United seemed to be able to hold a point until Pefok took Lingard’s bad back corner and won the winner in the 95th minute.

Maguire insisted that the tactical substitution had been the right decision, and Solskjaer also defended the change.

“The marks were in the last five minutes of the first half,” Solskjaer said. “In the second half, they got the crosses in the box, and Rapha, Victor and Harry survived it well. It was the best way to control them, but we should have done more with the ball.”

United has had a lot of bad nights in Switzerland, even after the Basel losses in 2011 and 2017, and this was the second. After the weekend Ronaldo’s Homecoming, there was a raw reality check that there was still work to be done.