Busby is a close as you can get in football to being regarded as a pioneer, as a visionary; with his ground-breaking youth scheme he re-wrote the way football teams were constructed and by recognising the potential of the European Cup he embraced a new frontier.
Under pressure from the English football authorities champions Chelsea did not enter the European Cup in its inaugural season in 1955/56, but despite the same opposition Busby led his championship winners into Europe for the competition's second season and managed to reach the semi-finals where they lost to Real Madrid.
After securing the league title again in 1956/57 United qualified once more for the European Cup in the 1957/68 season, and after their success in the competition the previous season United were automatically amongst the favourites.
Those walking the corridors of power at the Football Association and the Football League were diametrically opposed to the European Cup fearing it would undermine the integrity of the game at home, and so strove to make United's decision to compete as difficult as possible by dismissing any pleas to alleviate fixture congestion.
Under new league rules any team competing in Europe had to be back in England a full 24 hours before their next domestic fixture. In fact United's decision to charter a plane from British European Airways for that ill-fated round trip to Belgrade in February 1958 for the European Cup quarter-final against Red Star owed itself to this ruling.
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