Chapter 506 - 112 — Copenhagen Away (IV)

By the seventy-fifth minute, the numerical disadvantage had started costing United physically rather than just tactically.

Garnacho got back for one Copenhagen attack but closed Jelert a half-step slower than he had in the first half. Bruno reached Falk a beat late on another possession. McTominay spent longer beside the center-backs, worn down by defending far more ground than his position usually asked of him. Højlund’s pressing runs stayed committed, but the recovery afterward had visibly slowed.

Demien noticed it before anyone needed to point it out, and started positioning himself earlier to cover for it.

Copenhagen tried a cutback toward Falk. Demien intercepted, and rather than smash it clear, he turned out with it.

Bardghji counterpressed immediately. Another Copenhagen shirt arrived a step behind him.

「TRAIT ACTIVATED」 「Press Resistant」

Demien carried through both of them and kept going into Copenhagen’s half — nobody nearby to give it to, every teammate still thirty meters back from defending the last phase.

So he kept the ball himself.

One defender finally stepped. Demien moved it to Garnacho and continued his own run. Garnacho gave it straight back. Demien reached the edge of Copenhagen’s final third before Sørensen finally hauled him down.

United had moved the entire game almost seventy meters from their own goal.

The free kick was taken slowly, United holding possession for a moment longer before Copenhagen eventually won it back — but nearly ninety seconds had disappeared off the clock in the process.

Around the seventy-eighth minute, Copenhagen brought on more fresh legs still, Nicolai Boilesen and Jordan Larsson entering the fray. Their new runners attacked a United side that had spent over half an hour compensating for a missing man.

Demien was still moving the way he had in the third minute.

Several of his teammates weren’t.

Copenhagen started pinning United deeper. One attack went left — Demien shifted across. Copenhagen recycled. It went right — Bruno got there late, Demien shifted again and closed the inside pass. Copenhagen came back through the center — McTominay stepped, Falk drifted away from him, and the extra man simply reappeared somewhere else on the pitch.

United defended the first delivery.

Then the second.

Then Demien got onto a loose ball and tried releasing Garnacho — the pass was right, but Garnacho was still too deep to reach it ahead of Copenhagen’s recovering defender.

Possession came straight back.

Left again. Right again. A cross blocked, a corner cleared, a second ball fought for and lost. United’s defenders cleared and reset, cleared and reset, Demien deciding over and over which space he could actually afford to protect while Copenhagen refused to rush the final ball, patient enough to know United’s structure would eventually crack somewhere on its own.

It cracked in the eighty-third minute.

Bardghji received on one side, drawing Dalot toward him, then moved it backward rather than force the dribble. Falk received it in turn.

Demien stayed central — Óskarsson and another Copenhagen runner were occupying the space directly in front of Maguire and Varane, and leaving that area open would have handed Falk a direct route into the box or a simple cutback.

He held his position. It was the correct decision.

Copenhagen moved it wider instead, giving Falk time to lift his head.

On the far side, Lerager was already running behind Dalot. Dalot checked the ball first, then looked up and saw him.

Too late.

Falk delivered toward the back post. Demien turned the instant it left his boot, but even his pace couldn’t erase the distance the ball was already covering through the air.

Lerager got beyond Dalot.

Contact. Finish.

FC COPENHAGEN 3 — 3 MANCHESTER UNITEDLukas Lerager 83’

Parken detonated.

Demien didn’t turn on Dalot. He glanced once at the far post, understood exactly what had gone wrong, and turned straight back toward halfway — Copenhagen had four or five minutes plus stoppage left to find another, and there was nothing to gain from dwelling on the one that had just gone in.

Ten Hag reacted immediately. Højlund had scored twice against his old club and spent almost the entire second half fighting two center-backs alone while trying to give United an outlet — his legs were gone.

Mason Mount came on for him in the eighty-fourth minute.

No punishment in it. Højlund had given United everything the role had left in him.

The shape turned more fluid without a fixed striker — Mount could drop to help close midfield, support possession, or run beyond Bruno or Garnacho if a counter opened up. Another passing option for Demien.

It also created a new problem. Without Højlund pinning the center-backs, Diks and his partner could step higher and compress the pitch.

Demien received from Varane, expecting to find Højlund holding the line twenty meters away — nobody was there anymore. Mount was dropping toward the ball instead, Bruno also coming inside, and Copenhagen squeezed the space shut around all of them.

Demien got the pass away. United couldn’t push out with it.

The ball went back to Onana. Copenhagen came again.

United survived the first attempt but not the next full sequence.

Bardghji received with fresh legs against a defensive line that had been retreating for most of the half, moved inside, and Demien slid across to take away his direct shot. Bardghji released it wide instead.

The cross came in. Varane got a touch — not enough. United tried to clear again, Maguire heading it away from the immediate central danger.

For a moment it looked finished.

But ten-man defending had pushed United so deep for so long that no midfielder stood high enough to actually collect the clearance. It dropped near the edge of the box, and Bardghji — still alive from his first involvement — read the second phase faster than the exhausted bodies around him.

Demien turned and sprinted toward the loose ball.

Too far away.

Bardghji got there first, left-footed, half-volley. Onana reacted, got something on it.

Not enough.

FC COPENHAGEN 4 — 3 MANCHESTER UNITEDRoony Bardghji 87’

For several seconds, nothing on the pitch was audible over the stadium. Bardghji vanished under a pile of his own teammates. Copenhagen’s bench spilled toward the touchline without quite crossing onto the grass.

Demien didn’t stand still for it. He went straight to retrieve the ball — United were losing now, and there was nothing left to protect. Only time to make up.

United abandoned the conservative shape completely in the final minutes.

Demien pushed higher. McTominay stayed as the deepest body when possession began, but even he started joining attacks the moment United sustained pressure. Mount drifted between the lines. Bruno turned into almost a second forward. Garnacho held width to stretch Copenhagen thin. Maguire advanced whenever United could establish anything in Copenhagen’s half.

Getting them there fell to Demien.

A Copenhagen clearance dropped to him. Falk closed. He turned through him. Another defender arrived. Demien released Mount and kept running beyond him. Mount returned it. Demien drove at the box, five or six Copenhagen shirts collapsing around him now.

He could have forced a shot through the traffic.

He saw Garnacho outside instead.

Pass. Garnacho crossed. Copenhagen headed it clear. Demien collected it again outside the box and restarted the attack immediately — no thirty seconds wasted resetting, not with the game still to chase.

He switched to Bruno. Bruno tried finding Mount inside. Blocked. McTominay won the loose header that followed. Copenhagen cleared again.

All the pressure belonged to United now — Copenhagen’s priorities had flipped entirely, from exploiting the extra man to simply surviving what was left of the clock.

The fourth official’s board went up.

Demien received twenty-five yards out, Copenhagen’s midfield refusing to step toward him — they knew exactly what his passing could do to the space behind them if they did.

That gave him the room.

「TRAIT ACTIVATED」 「Long Shot Taker」

He struck it through the crowd of bodies in front of him. Grabara got down and pushed it away. The rebound didn’t fall kindly for United, Copenhagen clearing it toward the corner flag.

Demien raced across before Larsson could kill the ball dead there, forcing the throw back in United’s favor.

United attacked again. Demien clipped it to Mount, who laid it to Bruno. Bruno shot from the edge. Blocked. Another corner.

Maguire and Varane both went forward now, Onana the only body left behind. The corner was cleared, but Demien collected it outside the box, and Copenhagen’s entire defensive line started stepping toward him rather than risk another clean strike.

He used the movement — switch to Garnacho, who brought it down and whipped in one more delivery.

Maguire attacked it. The ball fell awkwardly rather than getting cleanly headed away, and Maguire got a second opportunity from around the edge of the box.

He struck it.

Crossbar.

The ball cracked back into play, United throwing themselves at the rebound before Copenhagen finally scrambled it clear.

For one second, everyone in the stadium had braced for 4-4.

One last United possession followed. Demien collected it near halfway off Copenhagen’s clearance and didn’t launch it blind — he carried until the first Copenhagen presser finally committed, moved it to Mount, took the return, and threaded Bruno between two midfielders.

Bruno turned and tried the final ball toward Garnacho.

Copenhagen intercepted it.

The ball went toward the touchline. A United shirt tried to keep it alive. Copenhagen cleared it again.

The referee checked his watch.

Whistle.

Fweeeeeetttttttt!

FULL TIME — FC COPENHAGEN 4 — 3 MANCHESTER UNITED

Copenhagen’s players sprinted toward their own supporters, completing one of the biggest European nights this club had produced in years.

United’s players just stopped, wherever they happened to be standing.

Højlund had scored twice against his own former club and still lost. Bruno had scored the goal that put ten-man United back ahead and still lost. Maguire had just struck the crossbar in the dying seconds. Demien had completed nearly every individual demand the match had placed on him.

None of it changed the number on the board.

「MATCH COMPLETE」 「FC COPENHAGEN 4 — 3 MANCHESTER UNITED」 「INDIVIDUAL OBJECTIVES」 「Line-Breaking Actions: COMPLETE」 「Clear Chances Created: COMPLETE」 「Defensive Recoveries: COMPLETE」 「Pass Accuracy: 90%+ — COMPLETE」 「TEAM OBJECTIVE」 「Manchester United Win — FAILED」 「MATCH RATING: 8.2」 「BASE OBJECTIVES: COMPLETE」 「Reward: +80 MP」 「TEAM OBJECTIVE BONUS: FAILED — NO TEAM BONUS」

He dismissed it without much interest.

The number felt almost beside the point next to what was happening around him.

United walked toward their traveling supporters before heading down the tunnel. Some applauded, appreciating the fight even in defeat. Some stood with their hands on their heads. A few shouted something that wasn’t applause at all.

The players acknowledged all of it — walking off without a word after a European away defeat would have looked worse than facing it.

Højlund got a complicated reception from the home end as he passed near their section, two goals and a losing shirt both true at once, but nobody stopped for a reunion moment. Not tonight.

The tunnel swallowed them one by one.

Inside the away dressing room, nobody screamed.

Boots came off slowly. Players sat where they’d landed. Physios moved between them checking for knocks that had gone unnoticed in the adrenaline of the last twenty minutes. The room carried the physical weight of nearly fifty minutes played a man light, written into every slumped shoulder in it.

Rashford wasn’t there — already dealing with what came after a red card, separately, elsewhere.

Ten Hag eventually spoke, brief and level. "It wasn’t effort," he said. "You retook the lead at three-two with ten men against their whole bench. That’s real character. The problem is what came after — we did the hardest part of the night and still couldn’t control the last ten minutes."

Nobody argued with it. Nobody needed to.

Demien sat with a drink in his hand, letting the match settle the way he always did, no panel left open in front of him anymore.

The result was already enough on its own.

Before the squad filed out, one of the staff screens near the door updated with the Champions League group standings.

GROUP A — AFTER MATCHDAY 4

MANCHESTER UNITED — 7 PTS (4 PLAYED)

REMAINING FIXTURES:

GALATASARAY (A)

BAYERN MUNICH (H)

The comfort United had built earlier in the group was gone. What had looked like a position they could coast through now needed two more results to actually secure.

Demien looked at it long enough to understand exactly what tonight had cost them.

Then he got up and left with the rest of the squad.