Perhaps it was never going to happen. Since Munich, Matt Busby had been sustained by the dream of winning the European Cup.
That was the only way the dead could be honoured, the only way to achieve any sort of closure. But after defeat to Partizan in the 1966 semi-final, everybody began to have doubts.
Pat Crerand, who had spent much of the previous hour crying in the dressing room after being sent off, tried to console Busby, insisting that United would win the league the following season and the European Cup the year after that, but a two-year surge to glory seemed a distant prospect.