Sir Alex Ferguson’s time in charge of Manchester United wouldn’t have garnered many regrets, such was his unrivalled success during his time at Old Trafford.
But one of the biggest moments he has rued for some time involved a player some might not have expected to have featured so heavily during the Scot's tenure.
Park Ji-sung played an important role for United during his time at the club – the South Korean was regularly given the responsibility of carrying out specific tasks by his manager in the biggest games, including man-marking Andrea Pirlo against AC Milan.
But when it came to one of the biggest games of Ferguson’s managerial career, he changed his approach with Park – and to this day he regrets the decision.
The game in question was the 2011 Champions League final, with United coming up against Pep Guardiola’s all-conquering Barcelona side boasting Lionel Messi at his brilliant best.
United had already suffered at the hands of the Argentine two years earlier, and it seemed that Park would have to be deployed to try to keep the diminutive magician out of the game.
Instead, Ferguson played him on the left flank, and Barcelona went on to win the game 3-1, with Messi scoring and setting up David Villa for the all-important third to kill the game off.
"That's where I lost the final against Barcelona at Wembley," Ferguson told SportBible in May 2021.
"I should've changed it at half-time and put Park Ji-sung on Messi. That was a mistake. I realised that after 10 minutes.
"I was going to do it at half-time, but we'd just equalised before half-time and I thought they might've seen the game differently.
"We were quite good in the last 10 minutes of the first-half, we'd come into it and we could've been in front actually.
"But I think if I'd have played Park Ji-sung against Messi I think we'd have beaten them, I really do.
"Messi had two highlights, a fantastic goal that he scored and then made the other one. He was a great player, but if there was a player to do it [nullify him] it was Park Ji-sung."
Park admitted in December he still thinks about how things could have gone differently at Wembley that day.
"It’s not easy to speak about something we didn’t actually do and there was only one player whom I really man-marked during a game: Andrea Pirlo. So, I don’t know what would have happened had I done it to another player,” Park told Goal.
"Messi was the best player in the world at that time. He was unstoppable, so I’m not saying 100 per cent that I could have shut him down.
"It wouldn’t have been easy to mark him but, sometimes, I think about how much I could have done against him..."
Ferguson, Park and United fans will be forever left wondering what could have been back in 2011 had the South Korean been given the instruction to man-mark Messi.
Pirlo’s own assessment won’t have made them feel any better about it, having been hassled out of the game a year earlier by the Seoul-born star.
"They'd programmed him to stop me. His devotion to the task was almost touching," Pirlo wrote in his autobiography. "Even though he was a famous player, he consented to being used as a guard dog."
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