Result: Manchester United voted the best team of the 21st century - here is why

When the vote was brought to a conclusion at 15:00 on Sunday May 10, Manchester United had received 59% of the 18736 votes cast in a final against Pep Guardiola's Barcelona.

United’s run to the final was as follows:

There are some all-time great teams in there but were United deserved winners?

An argument could be constructed that United’s longevity gave them a competitive advantage over their competitors. Guardiola, for example, was at Barca for just four years. But that misses the point, as it was that longevity that makes them the greatest team of the 21st century, managed by the greatest manager of the 21st century.

His retirement in 2013 paints a clear picture as to the intrinsic link between United’s success and Ferguson. The Scot had originally planned to retire at the end of the 2002 season – announcing that he was due to sever ties with the club at the start of the 2001-02 season. The then 60-year-old reversed that decision over the festive period but his side finished third in the table, some 10 points off champions Arsenal. Had he retired at the end of the 2002 season, would United have fallen into the post-Ferguson funk they now find themselves in? Almost certainly.

That decision bore substantial fruit: Ferguson would win another six Premier League titles, three League Cups, one FA Cup and the Champions League before finally retiring in 2013.

So why are United the best team of the 21st century? It is that longevity. Success is difficult enough, sustained success is a different matter entirely.

“The third year is fatal,” Bela Guttmann, who led Benfica to the European Cup in 1961 and 1962, often said.

Guttmann, a footballing pioneer, cautioned that after a three-year cycle, inertia set in; that any side, no matter how great, would become beset by its own over-familiarity.

It is a theory that still holds some weight, particularly considering the cycles that tend to permeate the top table of European football. Guardiola, for example, has never stayed at a club in excess of four years, which speaks to the difficulty of sustaining success. Ferguson’s United managed to stave off inertia and excel against it.

Further, one of United’s greatest successes came as the previous century drew to a close: the 1999 treble. Yet, United and Ferguson to went again. However, that sustained success in the 21st century did not come without its challenges. For example, at the end of 2006 campaign, current Eurosport contributor Rob Smyth questioned the trajectory of Ferguson’s and United’s legacy in an article that was headlined 'Shredding his legacy at every turn'.

The standfirst read as follows:

It was a legitimate question but one to which United gave an emphatic answer, winning the Champions League just a mere two years later, beating Chelsea on penalties in Moscow. That was a continuation of a pattern: United reacting to adversity with success. And that was bred in them by Ferguson.

Take, for example, the manager’s riposte to a column from Alan Hansen in 2003, who said, after United’s worst start in over a decade, that the 2002-03 season represented “the greatest challenge of [Ferguson’s] career”.

Ferguson dismissed those comments, saying:

There are, of course, other sides with legitimate claims on being the best side of the 21st century, but what sets United apart is their sustained success against a breadth of other great teams: Ferguson's United competed with, and had success against, a number of other teams whose brilliance straddled eras. United battled with, and overcame, sides as varied and talented as Arsene Wenger's Invincibles, Frank Rijkaard's Barcelona and the noisy neighbours in Manchester City, not to mention Roman Abramovich's Chelsea and Rafa Benitez's Liverpool. United would, of course, eventually knock Liverpool off their "f**king perch", winning a 19th league title at the end of the 2011 season.

And now it appears, certainly in the eyes of the Eurosport readers at least, that United have knocked every other team of the 21st century off their f**king perch, too.

It was very simple, each day last week Eurosport pitted legendary teams of the 21st century against one another in an old school knockout tournament.