Few had expected much from Galatasaray in the European Cup, but United were out of their depth on the pitch amid terrifying hostility and harassment off it

Sir Alex Ferguson's quest to win the European Cup with Manchester United was the sort of epic tale that usually takes a lot more than six years. It culminated at the Nou Camp in 1999, when Ferguson uttered his most famous phrase, and pretty much began when United were eliminated by Galatasaray in November 1993. You might call it From Hell to Football, Bloody Hell.

During that trip to Istanbul 19 years ago, Ferguson said United were "exposed … to as much hostility and harassment as I have ever known on a football expedition". In his autobiography, Gary Pallister went further. "It was a terrifying business which had nothing to do with sport, and can be categorised objectively as an absolute disgrace." A number of United players were assaulted by police; Steve Bruce was almost maimed by a flying brick; and 164 United fans were thrown in the cells without food or drink and then deported for the crime of breathing in oxygen. But, as Rob Hughes wrote in the Times, this was all a "violent smokescreen to a more horrid truth" – that United, and English football, were out of their depth in the European Cup.

"No Champions League for Manchester United, and in the Ali Sami Yen stadium here yesterday they made a poor case for belonging to anybody's league of champions," wrote David Lacey in this paper. In the Times, Hughes said that "The better team by some distance prevailed." Hugh McIlvanney's verdict in the Observer was even more damning. "After more than three decades of reporting British involvement in the European Cup, it is difficult to remember another occasion when genuinely outstanding challengers from this country fell so pathetically short of their true standards on a foreign ground."

United were cruising towards the retention of the Premier League; going into the second leg, they had a staggering 11-point lead after only 13 games. The general assumption was that, even with the debilitating foreigner rule that permitted only five overseas and assimilated players, they could challenge Milan, Barcelona and Monaco for the trophy. They beat Honved pretty comfortably in the first round, 5-3 on aggregate, and few people expected Galatasaray to give them any problems. If United won this tie they would progress to the last eight and the lucrative Champions League. In his brilliant book Are You Watching Liverpool?, Jim White wrote that victory "was the most certain thing this side of a date with a nurse". There have also been strong rumours that United's chief scout Les Kershaw – echoing Howard Wilkinson's infamous scouting report from Italia 90 – said that Galatasaray were nothing to worry about.

Turkish football had come a long way from when Bryan Robson helped West Bromwich Albion win 3-1 away to Galatasaray in the Uefa Cup in 1978, and this would be its greatest night. Galatasaray were an accomplished side – their spine of Bulent Korkmaz, Tugay and Hakan Sukur was also the spine of the Turkey side that ended 42 years on the periphery of international football by qualifying for Euro 96 – yet far from world-beaters. They had won the title only because of an 8-0 away win at Ankaragucu SK on the final day of the previous season; and in the 10 games they played in the European Cup that season, their only two victories were against Cork City, each by a single goal.

They did not need to beat United, instead putting them out on away goals. That seemed impossible when United took an early 2-0 lead in the first leg at Old Trafford. That start prompted a hubris which, as ever, would beget nemesis. Ferguson said United "replaced controlled aggression with self-indulgence"; before they knew it they were 3-2 down and facing a first European defeat at Old Trafford as Galatasaray passed through them with alarming ease. Eric Cantona scored a late equaliser, although the second half was as notable for Peter Schmeichel's roughhouse treatment of a Kurdish demonstrator off the pitch. Schmeichel erroneously thought he was burning a United flag. It set the mood for the second leg.

"They will be waiting for you at the airport," promised Galatasaray's German manager Reiner Hollmann after the first leg, with a twinkle in his eye. So they were. United were greeted by hundreds of fans chanting furiously. "Wellcome to the Hell!" (sic) was the most famous of many banners. Another said "This is the end of the road". It did not specify whether it referred to United's European hopes or United's players' lives. A fan got right in Paul Parker's face and offered a touch of clarity: "You will die."

Reaction to the welcome was mixed. Lacey wrote that it was "good-humoured if fervent"; in the Express, Steve Curry said that "it was the crazed delirium usually witnessed on news bulletins from Islamic rallies in Iraq". On the plane home, Schmeichel bollocked a load of journalists for unnecessarily scaring his family. United players smiled their way through it, albeit a little nervously. When he was asked the following day about the "riot" at the airport, Ferguson smiled: "You've obviously never seen a Glasgow wedding."

Nonetheless, the hostility was obvious. When United arrived at their beautiful hotel, Pallister trailed in last, doing things in his own time as usual. As he walked past a bellboy and smiled politely, the bellboy drew his finger across his throat. On the day before the game, an Istanbul paper launched into a prolonged rant against English football, the highlight of which was "Stuff Turkey, stuff this, stuff that, we'll see tomorrow who gets stuffed!" It was a recurring metaphor; after the game, the headline in one paper was "The Turkey mounted the English".

First it assaulted the English ears. On the day of the match, the majority of fans arrived eight or nine hours before the game. When United went out to look around a couple of hours before kick-off, they were hit by the most magnificent wall of sound. "The most incredible noise I've ever experienced in my life," said Gary Neville, who at the time was an 18-year-old with one first-team appearance to his name. The way the chanting was organised, one side of the ground followed by the other, gave new meaning to the phrase "end-to-end stuff". United were an exceptionally hard team with a spine of Schmeichel, Bruce, Pallister, Paul Ince, Roy Keane, Mark Hughes and Cantona. But they had never seen anything like this. Pallister said that "It made Anfield look like a tea party".

Pallister missed the game with injury; that and the foreigner rule left Ferguson with some tricky decisions. He had to omit one of Schmeichel, Cantona, Giggs, Denis Irwin, Keane and Hughes. Eventually he plumped for Hughes, to general astonishment.

The game was a stinker. A combination of a lively pitch, Galatasaray's man-to-man marking and time wasting, not to mention United's painful lack of street wisdom, meant United got no momentum and did not create a single clear chance. Lee Sharpe had a goal disallowed but the best opportunity went to Gala, with Schmeichel making a remarkable save from Hakan. Galatasaray fully deserved to go through. "They were tough and wily," said Keane in his autobiography. "They pulled every stroke in the book." The match was over before United knew it; there are occasional rumours that they thought League Cup rules applied – with away goals kicking in after extra time rather than before. They wouldn't have scored anyway.

"There can be no excuse for that terrible performance and I'm not going to waste time looking for one," said Ferguson in the aftermath of the game. "It was depressing to see how completely frustrated our fellas were when Galatasaray man-marked everybody." Cantona's verdict was simple. "Galatasaray is a little team but today so were Manchester United."

Cantona had lost his rag long before the end. In the 77th minute, with Galatasaray faffing over a throw-in, he booted the ball out of the reserve keeper Nezih Ali Bologlu's hands and then floored him with an elbow to the chest. He could have been sent off for that; he did walk at the final whistle after informing the Swiss referee Kurt Röthlisberger what he thought of his performance. (Some say Cantona did not say a word to Röthlisberger, who was a French teacher, although his gestures probably made things clear enough.) As Röthlisberger waved the red card, Cantona punched the ball miles in the air with a strength we still can't quite fathom. (Watch it here, it's ridiculous.)

Cantona was convinced Röthlisberger was on the take. He was banned from refereeing for life in 1997 after being found guilty of bribery and, though there have been subsequent allegations about this game, nothing has ever been proven. The reality is that Terry Christian could have refereed the game and Galatasaray would probably still have gone through.

At the time, there were bigger problems with officialdom to worry about. "As the referee blew the final whistle I could see in Eric's eyes that he had gone," wrote Robson in his autobiography. He took Cantona by the arm to lead him off the pitch; they were accompanied by a policeman, all the way to the top of the pitchside tunnel that led to the dressing rooms underneath the ground.

Then, in a rather different sense than usual, United took the result on the chin. "I was just about to thank the policeman when he punched Eric. Eric stumbled down a couple of steps, so I turned to throw a punch at the copper," wrote Robson. "As I did, a shield smashed into the back of me. I fell down a few steps, bashing my elbow against the wall. Eric wanted to go back up and fight, but by then the other lads were coming down the steps and calmed us down."

Robson needed six stitches in his elbow. Parker was also clouted down a few steps, where Schmeichel broke his fall. ("I am never going back to Turkey," said Parker in Glory Glory! "Never.") United's players did not start it, but nor were they a group of pacifists. "We had a few who could look after themselves," said Bruce. "We gave as good as we got."

They almost gave a bit more. "In the dressing room Eric went crazy," says Keane in his autobiography. "While the rest of us just wanted to get out of there, he was determined to go back outside to sort out the rogue cop who'd been wielding his truncheon. Eric was a big, strong lad. He was serious. He insisted he was going to kill 'that fucker'. It took the combined efforts of the [assistant] manager, Brian Kidd, and a few of the players to restrain him. Normally I wouldn't have backed off a fight, but even I wasn't up for this one. There were a lot of Turks out there!"

Ferguson said that "the police were even more frightening than the fans". Compared with this hellish fury, United's players would have taken a woman scorned any day. It did not end there. The bus was bricked on the way back to the hotel; one shattered a window where Bruce had been resting his head. "If it had smashed through I'd have been dead," he said. "That would have just about summed it up."

All the while there were groups of United fans on their way back to Manchester, most or all of whom had done nothing wrong. Hundreds of others were battered around the city the night before the match. Some were dumped in the Bayrampasa jail, made notorious by the film Midnight Express. One group of fans did not get home for a month. Their experiences were inevitably, miserably, covered up by the authorities.

It took a long time for the anger to go away. "One only has to watch the pre-second-leg footage from the United video to see that the lack of what we considered to be proper civilisation in Turkey created such angst in the United team that what followed was scarcely sport as we know it," wrote Richard Kurt in the excellent United! Despatches From Old Trafford. "What they did to our fans alone merited their exclusion from the cup as a nation unfit to receive visitors."

When Ferguson was interviewed soon after for United's new VHS magazine, he was asked if he was glad to be out of Turkey. "Och, you bet. I'll no' be going back!" In fact he went back a year later, when United again drew 0-0 in very different circumstances, and will be returning again in November.

The horror movie of 1993 became a vital part of United's European education. Gary Neville, who was brought on for the last few minutes to deliver some long throws, said he "learned more in 10 minutes than I had in the previous two years". It was not only the inexperienced who picked up new tricks; the whole club learned about man-to-man marking, the need for central-midfield discipline, not to mention the alien environments they would encounter on their quest to lift the giant trophy. United didn't only go to hell; they also went to school. But you'd have been a brave man to accentuate the positive in the United dressing room on the night of 3 November 1993.

Click here for footage of United's trip to Istanbul