Manchester United 4–0 Sabah: A Dominant Champions League Return
Manchester United waited 1,003 days for this. They needed just 90 minutes to remind Old Trafford what a routine Champions League night is supposed to look like.
A 4-0 win over Sabah, the first game back in Europe’s elite competition since December 2023, was as comfortable as the scoreline suggests. It was also quietly revealing.
A slow burn, then Cunha lights the fuse
For 27 minutes, this felt like what it was: a reintroduction rather than a statement. Sabah, from Azerbaijan, were organised, tidy, and happy to spoil. United probed without incision.
Then a loose pass in midfield changed the tempo. United sprang forward, Patrick Dorgu tearing down the left. The 21-year-old, starting at left-back for the first time under Michael Carrick, drove in a low ball. Matheus Cunha darted across his marker and swept it past Stas Pokatilov.
Old Trafford exhaled. United had their first Champions League goal in almost three years. The anxiety that had hung in the air since kick-off vanished in an instant.
The pressure didn’t ease. It built.
Bruno Fernandes, who had seen too many European nights drift away under Erik ten Hag, took control. Three minutes before half-time, he doubled the lead, finishing off a slick move that sliced Sabah open. The football was quick, sharp, and ruthless – everything United’s last Champions League campaign had not been.
Then came the moment that really crackled.
Sesko returns, and Old Trafford roars
Benjamin Sesko’s name had already carried a murmur around the ground when the teams were announced. This was his first start since May 3. His first start since that grim night against Liverpool when Ibrahima Konate shoved him into the advertising hoardings and turned a nagging shin problem into a long lay-off.
United had taken no chances. No pre-season friendlies. Just hard work at Carrington and patience.
The reward arrived on the stroke of half-time.
Bryan Mbeumo slid a pass through the heart of Sabah’s defence. Sesko timed his run perfectly, burst clear, rounded Pokatilov, somehow stayed upright as he stumbled, and then rolled the ball into an empty net.
His leap – that trademark, elastic celebration – detonated the Stretford End. It wasn’t just a goal; it was confirmation that the 23-year-old who finished last season so promisingly had not been dulled by months on the sidelines.
Sesko now has two goals in 117 minutes this season, one every 58.5 minutes. Last year, under Carrick, he hit seven in 595 minutes – one every 85. The numbers are starting to stack up. So is the sense that United finally have a centre-forward who can hurt teams in different ways: an 88th-minute towering header at Everton at the weekend, a composed one-on-one here.
He lasted 64 minutes before being withdrawn, job done, confidence restored.
Dorgu the attacking left-back – with an asterisk
Dorgu’s selection at left-back told its own story. Luke Shaw, who started all 38 Premier League games last season, was missing, almost certainly wrapped in cotton wool ahead of Sunday’s Manchester derby. The Champions League and domestic cups mean he cannot be flogged through three games a week.
So Carrick turned to Dorgu, who had never played left-back for him in nine previous appearances, always used higher up the pitch. Many supporters had wanted Lewis Hall in that role this summer. Hall stayed at Newcastle. Dorgu got the chance.
With the ball, he looked like he’d been waiting for this.
He created the opener, ghosting into advanced territory as Cunha drifted inside, then fizzing that low cross beyond Akim Zedadka and onto Cunha’s boot. Later, from a similar zone high on the left, he picked out Sesko with a teasing delivery. The cross was slightly behind the striker, who improvised with a back-heel flick that skidded just wide.
It was the kind of attacking full-back play Old Trafford has long enjoyed. But Carrick’s reservations about Dorgu’s defensive edge were not without foundation.
On one occasion, Zedadka went past him far too easily, forcing Lisandro Martinez to slide across and snuff out the danger. On another, Dorgu failed to block a Kaheem Parris cross, which Joy-Lance Mickels nodded into the side-netting.
Dorgu looks like the left-back you pick when you expect to spend most of the night on the front foot. Against better opposition, Carrick may think twice.
A night that felt simple – and that was the point
United’s last Champions League campaign, under Ten Hag, was chaotic. One win, one draw, four defeats. Bottom of a group with Bayern Munich, Copenhagen and Galatasaray. Out of Europe before Christmas.
This was the opposite. No drama. No late collapse. No sense of impending disaster.
By the hour mark, it was over.
Martinez made sure of that. Midway through the second half, a dreadful Sabah defensive mix-up left the ball bobbling a yard from goal. The Argentine pounced, smashing in from close range for United’s fourth.
From there, Carrick could relax. He rotated. He protected legs. He handed minutes to teenage academy products Shea Lacey and Harry Amass, a reminder that these nights are not only about the present but the pathway.
The football for United’s second and third goals had been slick, involving five or more players in each move. The crowd of 73,685 responded to that fluency as much as the scoreline. This was the kind of easy authority that has too often deserted United in Europe.
They even kept a clean sheet for the first time this season. It was not flawless – Orphe Mbina should have scored with a stoppage-time header that sailed just over – but it stood. For a team that has conceded in a variety of ways already this campaign, it mattered.
Carrick knew it.
Carrick’s verdict and the road ahead
Asked afterwards if this was the perfect start, Carrick didn’t dance around it.
“I think so. Kind of what we set out to achieve really,” he said. “A good performance individually, collectively, pretty much all the way through the game. From start to finish, boys that started, boys that came on the pitch, clean sheet, and some goals and some good exciting football. It was a good night all round.”
On the clean sheet, he was just as clear: “I think a clean sheet tonight was important for us. We’ve conceded goals in different ways, and one goes in the top corner, and sometimes you can do things about it, sometimes you can’t, to a point. I think collectively as a team we’ve done a lot of good things, and that’s why we’re kind of excited about what the season brings and not game-to-game, so much of getting too carried away.”
The real examination of those words is coming quickly.
United’s next two Champions League fixtures are away to Atletico Madrid – whom they beat 2-1 in pre-season – and then Como, fresh from a 4-1 win over RB Leipzig, in back-to-back midweeks after the international break. Last season, 10 points from 24 all but guaranteed qualification. Nine, with a healthy goal difference, was enough for some.
Beat Sabah, and you’ve done what you must. Take something from Madrid and Como, and this campaign starts to look very different from the last one.
For now, Old Trafford has its Champions League lights back on, its anthem ringing again, its team winning without stress.
The question is no longer whether United belong on nights like this. It’s whether they can carry this control and conviction into the games that really define a season.
