Signs that a World Cup rivalry has not ignited as expected between Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo have been plentiful for those prepared to take a look this season. Rather than “land one on him”, as Alan Shearer advised the England international in the emotional aftermath of Gelsenkirchen, Rooney began the campaign by expressing disappointment at the Portuguese winger’s part in his sending- off in Germany, albeit with the repeated forgiveness.
Sir Alex Ferguson has admitted to being appalled by images of crowd violence at the Stadio Olimpico but it was a reflection of his priorities and his influence on tonight’s Champions League quarter-final with Roma that, even without the injured Louis Saha, the Manchester United manager insisted a revenge attack would only occur on the Old Trafford pitch.
Manchester United yesterday issued an unprecedented condemnation of the Italian police’s handling of the crowd trouble at the Champions League match with Roma in the Stadio Olympico on Wednesday and asked the British government to help investigate. But as Uefa opened an investigation into the violence, United are also bracing for disciplinary action. Both United and Roma can expect to be charged by Uefa.
The violence that left Manchester United supporters imagining they had been transported through their own episode of Life on Mars on Wednesday was not the end of surrealism at the Stadio Olimpico. On the final whistle the home crowd responded to a profligate Roma performance as though certain of a place in the Champions League semi-finals while the defeated Premiership leaders celebrated the reprieve that ensures they are not. The reality check, meanwhile, revealed that Sir Alex Ferguson’s team have still to announce themselves as serious contenders for the European Cup.
Fighting on the terraces and bruised on the pitch; everything Manchester United had feared in Rome came to pass last night as their Champions League ambitions suffered under a torturous examination by the Giallorossi.
The Middlesbrough captain, George Boateng, has been disciplined by his club after warning the Manchester United winger Cristiano Ronaldo that his behaviour on the pitch could attract foul play.
Sir Alex Ferguson could not have hand-picked a more symbolic place for his latest eulogy to Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney than the Eternal City of Rome. After all, in terms of waiting for their impact on the Champions League, it seems the Manchester United manager has been waiting forever.
Old Trafford provided a playground on Saturday for the DVD producers who seek striking images and charismatic personalities to promote the product that will inevitably follow Manchester United’s coronation as English champions.
For a while, the news from Old Trafford must have given cause for optimism as Chelsea prepared for action at Vicarage Road. Blackburn led by Matt Derbyshire’s first-half goal and Nemanja Vidic, the strong defender whose development has been a crucial component in Sir Alex Ferguson’s latest title contending team, had been put out of this game - and potentially the rest of the season - with a broken collarbone.
The management brotherhood closed ranks behind Steve McClaren last night with his old boss, the Godfather, to the fore. The Manchester United manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, said he was confident that the England coach, his former assistant at Old Trafford, was strong enough to deal with the vitriol he is enduring, but criticised the “mocking culture” which encouraged it.
Ryan Giggs hailed Gareth Bale after both scored vital goals to inspire Wales to a much-needed European Championship qualifying victory over San Marino on Wednesday.
No one is more inclined to promote their club than Sir Alex Ferguson and yet the Manchester United manager cast doubt on the prospect of a second treble himself yesterday when he claimed that standards had risen markedly since the historic days of 1999.
One old man in the Ramat Gan Stadium in Tel Aviv shook his head as though he had encountered some unfathomable contradiction in the scriptures.
It was another dark night for English football here on Saturday and life did not get any easier for Steve McClaren after the game when it emerged that the England manager had a dressing room row with Wayne Rooney. The Manchester United striker is understood to have taken exception to being singled out by McClaren for England’s woeful record in front of goal.
Former West Brom midfielder Michael Appleton was awarded £1.5 million today after suing a surgeon for ruining his career.
Ben Foster is desperate to be given the chance to establish himself as Manchester United’s first-choice goalkeeper next season.
Abuse accompanies almost every step from Cristiano Ronaldo these days but
there is venom in the voice of Middlesbrough that exceeds any World Cup
wound. Three times they have crossed the Portuguese international this
season and three times he has cost them from the penalty spot; it would be
no surprise if the Boro chairman, Steve Gibson, himself attempted to pay for
Manchester United’s irrepressible star to return to Iberia this summer.
Manchester United face further anxiety in their contract negotiations with Cristiano Ronaldo after the player’s agent announced the Portuguese international did not want any distractions until the end of the season.
The last time Manchester United collected a trophy, they did so wearing “This is for you, Smudge” T-shirts. Alan Smith is determined the next cup United win, he will be playing a full part in the celebrations.
Henrik Larsson’s script-writer tested credulity again last night. Just as he invariably delivered decisive goals for Celtic, the Swede took his leave of Old Trafford by redeeming Manchester United’s mediocre display with the header that assured their place in the quarter-final draw at the expense of a feisty but limited Lille.
It was a night for authority, a brusque Manchester United statement of contempt for what had happened in northern France two weeks before - and some mighty assertion of their right to a return to a pivotal stage of the Champions League after last season’s humiliating denouement against this less than daunting Lille.
The entente threatens to be anything but cordiale tonight as a Manchester United side struggling for strikers after Louis Saha joined the walking wounded contest a place in the Champions League quarter-finals with Lille, who remain incensed by Ryan Giggs’ winning goal in the first leg a fortnight ago.
The new president of Uefa, Michel Platini, is reportedly struggling to find a solution to increasing fan violence in and around Europe’s stadiums. Crowd trouble in France, Greece and Serbia last weekend followed violent incidents in Germany and Italy.
If you thought booing Cristiano Ronaldo might put him off, you may wish to think again. The Manchester United winger says: “It’s better when people boo,” because it makes him more determined.
It is the time of the season that Sir Alex Ferguson traditionally calls “squeaky bum time” and after the FA Cup fifth round replay defeat of Reading he asked for more noise in these tense times. The Manchester United manager said that the away support at the Madejski Stadium on Tuesday night was “incredible” and made no secret of his belief that, at Old Trafford, the fans do not get behind the team enough.
It would have been football’s equivalent of coming back from the dead, and when Brynjar Gunnarsson’s shot hit the bar in injury time, Reading’s FA Cup life twitched for the last time. After they were three goals down to Manchester United in the first six minutes, Reading’s second-half revival was astonishing - one more goal and the old competition would have broken new ground in provincial Berkshire.
With attention turning back to the race for the Premiership title, Jose Mourinho has taken a swipe at Manchester United - claiming they are lucky to be nine points clear of Chelsea.
It was Sir Alex Ferguson’s intention to “leave out the older players” for Manchester United’s fifth-round FA Cup replay against Reading tonight, but for Gary Neville the rules have changed over the last few days. The club captain was left out on Saturday amid suggestions that Ferguson wanted to punish him for a dispute between the pair during the match against Lille last week.
Sir Alex Ferguson described this afterwards as Manchester United’s “most difficult game of the season”. With three minutes remaining, it seemed United had escaped with a 1-1 draw, rather than the defeat they deserved against a Fulham side that stifled them at crucial stages.
Uefa, Manchester United and Lille spent yesterday gathering evidence ahead of a three-pronged investigation which will underline that, more than a century after the entente cordiale, England and France remain two very distinct cultures.
Sir Alex Ferguson last night condemned the extraordinary behaviour of Lille after Manchester United’s opponents threatened to force an abandonment of this Champions League knock-out tie by leaving the pitch.
The Premiership’s big beasts prowl back into Europe this week, led by the club who regard themselves as the mightiest of them all. Having reasserted themselves in the domestic arena, Manchester United return to Continental competition tonight determined to restore their prestige in the Champions League.
Gary Neville, the Manchester United captain, called yesterday for agents to be removed from football. Neville, who has been with United for his entire professional career, believes their influence is now too great and wants to see a backlash.
Today marks the start of the Premiership holiday season, that conflicting period of relaxation and concentration that can determine tears or titles for the traveller come May. Charlton head for Spain and a five-day training course, so their intense manager, Alan Pardew, is fearing injury before departure; Liverpool are off to Portugal to prepare for their all-or-nothing Champions League date with Barcelona; and Wayne Rooney has been granted rest in readiness for the title assault that nine more victories should deliver to Manchester United.
There is no finer reader of a Premiership run-in than Sir Alex Ferguson, so perhaps we should not have been surprised at his prescience yesterday. Man-chester United, he warned in the match programme, could not depend on blitzing opponents every week and, not for the first time, he was right.
Every weekend you can see them on suburban park pitches, urchins in shorts below their knees. As dads shout competitively or quietly cringe, they pursue the ball in a pack. Some kick at fresh air, others collapse in tears, clutching shins after minimal contact. And every once in a claret and blue moon, one gets spotted by a Premiership giant.
Sir Alex Ferguson is rarely in the position of having to sell Old Trafford to one of his employees, but there was an indication of growing unease at Spanish courting of Cristiano Ronaldo yesterday when the Manchester United manager publicly appealed to the Portuguese international to consider his career before a change of climate.
Cristiano Ronaldo was 22 yesterday - not a bad age for a football coronation, and not necessarily premature when you remember Pele was 17 when he had his in a World Cup final in Stockholm and George Best was still just 19 when he was crowned in Lisbon’s Estado da Luz. But then this is the point, isn’t it?
A savage demolition of Tottenham and their six-point lead over Chelsea
emphatically restored but, when Cristiano Ronaldo is involved, life is never
that simple for Manchester United. He is the man leading the renaissance of
Sir Alex Ferguson’s team and yet with his brilliance comes the controversy,
too.
They came to boo Michael Carrick, not to praise him. But by the time this hectic match was halfway through, all the abuse from the White Hart Lane crowd had transferred from their former midfield idol to the quicksilver figure in the red No 7 shirt, Cristiano Ronaldo, whose trickery in earning the penalty which brought United their crucial breakthrough just before half-time appeared, upon second or third viewing, questionable.
No English beacon from the World Cup or young Welshman with immense potential and a price-tag to match rode into Old Trafford ahead of the transfer deadline yet Manchester United were otherwise uncomplicated and ruthless in business last night, drawing the priority of the Premiership crown one step closer and captivated by confirmation that Wayne Rooney will have a major say in closing the deal.
Gareth Bale is believed to have turned down the chance to join Tottenham Hotspur for £10m and will remain at Southampton until the end of the season.
Fortune favoured the rich and powerful once more when the draw for the fifth round of the FA Cup was made yesterday, both Manchester United and Chelsea being handed home ties for the third time running in this season’s competition.
The depth of disquiet at Manchester United over Real Madrid’s blatant courtship of Cristiano Ronaldo became apparent last night when the Portuguese winger admitted he has been banned from mentioning the Bernabeu by Sir Alex Ferguson.
No Emperor’s stare or up-turned collar completed the magnificent impersonation of Eric Cantona yet Wayne Rooney’s response to the execution of an exquisite chip and Portsmouth’s FA Cup ambition suggested a similarly talismanic effect on the remainder of Manchester United’s season.
No one has established whether the plane flying over Manchester United’s Carrington training ground last week was on a spying mission, but if it was, you can guarantee it was not uncovering information about Wayne Rooney. What more could be learned?
Last weekend it was the title race and last night it was a feud that was rekindled between Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsène Wenger as the Scot accused the Arsenal manager of massaging his own ego with claims Manchester United are renowned for their lack of stamina.
Real Madrid will offer £35m for the Manchester United winger Cristiano Ronaldo this summer, according to sources close to the club’s sporting director, Pedrag Mijatovic.
Ruud van Nistelrooy has told the Netherlands coach Marco van Basten that he is no longer available to play for the national team.
Police have begun an inquiry after claims that Lee Hendrie yelled abuse at a disabled fan during a match. The Aston Villa midfielder is alleged to have made insulting comments to a wheelchair-bound supporter during the team’s game against Manchester United at Old Trafford on 13 January. The former England international, who did not play in the match, was a substitute and was warming up on the touchline close to the disabled fans’ area.
