Man United 1-1 Young Boys: Mason Greenwood on target as Champions League group stage ends with draw

Getty Images
Malik Ouzia @MalikOuzia_8 December 2021

A much-changed Manchester United ended their Champions League group stage campaign with an entertaining 1-1 draw at home to Swiss side Young Boys.

Mason Greenwood’s terrific acrobatic finish was cancelled out by a goal of similar quality from Fabian Rieder, before both sides squandered excellent chances to take all three points.

They would have been of little significance to United, who had already sealed qualification for the last-16 as group winners by beating Villarreal in their penultimate fixture, allowing new interim boss Ralf Rangnick the luxury of rotating his entire side for his first European game in charge.

As well as the 11 changes from the starting XI that began against Crystal Palace at the weekend, the German named a bench made up of academy graduates and third-choice goalkeeper Tom Heaton, giving the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo, Bruno Fernandes and Harry Maguire the night off ahead of the Premier League meeting with Norwich.

Greenwood opened the scoring inside ten minutes when showing superb technique to volley Luke Shaw’s low cross in at the near-post, before Juan Mata saw his effort deflected over from close-range, while a poor pass from the lively Amad Diallo saw another clear-cut opening go to waste.

An error from Donny van de Beek was punished on the stroke of half-time, the Dutchman giving the ball away before Rieder curled a wonderful effort past Dean Henderson into the top corner.

Anthony Elanga missed United’s best chance to restore their lead after the restart, denied by Guillaume Faivre in the visiting goal, while Young Boys substitute Vincent Sierro slid wide from a great position in the centre of the box at the other end.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in