Monday, 8 December 2008
Even during a match that promised constant attacking, Cristiano Ronaldo seemed distracted. For a man so self-regarding as the Portugal forward, it may not have helped his focus when, every few minutes, Old Trafford’s electronic advertising hoardings ringed the pitch with 50-odd images of his head and torso.
His left hip was his most prominent body part on Saturday. The winger took himself off, kicking the ball into touch and walking straight down the tunnel a few minutes after suffering a knock to the joint in the second half, leaving Manchester United briefly with ten men as they hastily arranged a substitution.
Ronaldo was fit enough to travel with Sir Alex Ferguson, his manager, to Paris officially to receive the European Player of the Year award yesterday. He shed a tear of emotion, denied reports that he had ever described himself as the best player in the world and emphasised to his club that they must continue to excel if they hope to keep him.
“I have played for five years with Manchester United, a club where I feel at home,” he said. “I arrived there very young, and I have won individual and team titles. I have this individual reward which makes me happy. It is the culmination of work which I put in place a long time ago, but I am ambitious. It is imperative that I continue to win both individual and team titles.
It is always a special thing to reach this level of excellence. But the hardest thing is to stay at that level. I am very ambitious and a very strong character and have a winning mentality. I want to continue to improve like the best players do. I must carry on my apprenticeship, individually and collectively. This Ballon d’Or is the first step on a journey that will go further.”
United are going to White Hart Lane on Saturday, six points off the summit of the Barclays Premier League with a game in hand. Wayne Rooney and Patrice Evra are suspended and Ronaldo is a doubt. Rooney’s absence will at least allow Ferguson to give Carlos Tévez a rare start. This was a contest tinted by an ending.
Dwight Yorke said that he was “shocked, surprised and saddened” by Roy Keane’s resignation as Sunderland manager last Thursday. “I’m very sad to see him go. I really genuinely believe he could have turned things around, but for whatever reason, he decided not to,” the midfield player said. Yorke helped to prepare the team for this game with Ricky Sbragia, the caretaker manager.
Sbragia said that, in essence, he had used Keane’s tactics. Perhaps this was one reason why Keane chose the week of a trip to his former club to quit: to escape the damning reality that his £80 million transfer spree had bought a team whose best hope of avoiding a heavy beating at Old Trafford was a game plan worthy of a lower-league side visiting in the cup.
Sunderland played 4-1-4-1, 9-0-1, call it what you will. Given his apparent enthusiasm for communicating by text message, Keane possibly describes it as “evry1 in dfns”. They were tactics that resemble the club, withdrawn and diffident. The game was not so much one-way traffic as a permanent snarl-up in and around the Sunderland penalty area.
Within the opening minutes, it was clear that the visiting team’s main ambition was to belt the ball as far away as possible. This is not an unusual attitude for away teams at Old Trafford but Sunderland took it to extremes. No shots on target and only three attempts on goal to United’s 31.
After the match, the instinct of some analysts was to praise Sunderland for workrate, cohesion and for almost pinching a point at a stadium where United have won ten matches in succession. It can be argued that this approach was sensible and realistic given the club’s fragility. But you can find teams in Coca-Cola League Two who know how to park the bus in front of goal, then clamp it.
That Sunderland only broke in injury time was more down to United’s failure to unscrew them earlier. Ferguson called for timekeeping duties to be taken away from referees, bemoaning the four minutes’ added time allotted by Mark Halsey as too brief. But United only needed a few bonus seconds, Nemanja Vidic being the most alert when Michael Carrick’s deflected shot bounced off a post.
In the wider context, Ferguson feels that United have ample time. “The fixture list has been horrendous for us, playing away from home after every European tie. We’ve coped well,” he said. “If we get within two or three points of the top two [by the turn of the year] we have a marvellous chance.”
His left hip was his most prominent body part on Saturday. The winger took himself off, kicking the ball into touch and walking straight down the tunnel a few minutes after suffering a knock to the joint in the second half, leaving Manchester United briefly with ten men as they hastily arranged a substitution.
Ronaldo was fit enough to travel with Sir Alex Ferguson, his manager, to Paris officially to receive the European Player of the Year award yesterday. He shed a tear of emotion, denied reports that he had ever described himself as the best player in the world and emphasised to his club that they must continue to excel if they hope to keep him.
“I have played for five years with Manchester United, a club where I feel at home,” he said. “I arrived there very young, and I have won individual and team titles. I have this individual reward which makes me happy. It is the culmination of work which I put in place a long time ago, but I am ambitious. It is imperative that I continue to win both individual and team titles.
It is always a special thing to reach this level of excellence. But the hardest thing is to stay at that level. I am very ambitious and a very strong character and have a winning mentality. I want to continue to improve like the best players do. I must carry on my apprenticeship, individually and collectively. This Ballon d’Or is the first step on a journey that will go further.”
United are going to White Hart Lane on Saturday, six points off the summit of the Barclays Premier League with a game in hand. Wayne Rooney and Patrice Evra are suspended and Ronaldo is a doubt. Rooney’s absence will at least allow Ferguson to give Carlos Tévez a rare start. This was a contest tinted by an ending.
Dwight Yorke said that he was “shocked, surprised and saddened” by Roy Keane’s resignation as Sunderland manager last Thursday. “I’m very sad to see him go. I really genuinely believe he could have turned things around, but for whatever reason, he decided not to,” the midfield player said. Yorke helped to prepare the team for this game with Ricky Sbragia, the caretaker manager.
Sbragia said that, in essence, he had used Keane’s tactics. Perhaps this was one reason why Keane chose the week of a trip to his former club to quit: to escape the damning reality that his £80 million transfer spree had bought a team whose best hope of avoiding a heavy beating at Old Trafford was a game plan worthy of a lower-league side visiting in the cup.
Sunderland played 4-1-4-1, 9-0-1, call it what you will. Given his apparent enthusiasm for communicating by text message, Keane possibly describes it as “evry1 in dfns”. They were tactics that resemble the club, withdrawn and diffident. The game was not so much one-way traffic as a permanent snarl-up in and around the Sunderland penalty area.
Within the opening minutes, it was clear that the visiting team’s main ambition was to belt the ball as far away as possible. This is not an unusual attitude for away teams at Old Trafford but Sunderland took it to extremes. No shots on target and only three attempts on goal to United’s 31.
After the match, the instinct of some analysts was to praise Sunderland for workrate, cohesion and for almost pinching a point at a stadium where United have won ten matches in succession. It can be argued that this approach was sensible and realistic given the club’s fragility. But you can find teams in Coca-Cola League Two who know how to park the bus in front of goal, then clamp it.
That Sunderland only broke in injury time was more down to United’s failure to unscrew them earlier. Ferguson called for timekeeping duties to be taken away from referees, bemoaning the four minutes’ added time allotted by Mark Halsey as too brief. But United only needed a few bonus seconds, Nemanja Vidic being the most alert when Michael Carrick’s deflected shot bounced off a post.
In the wider context, Ferguson feels that United have ample time. “The fixture list has been horrendous for us, playing away from home after every European tie. We’ve coped well,” he said. “If we get within two or three points of the top two [by the turn of the year] we have a marvellous chance.”
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