Roma 2 Man United 1
Oh dear. In the end losing 2-1 was a good result (and correctly predicted) but United suffered badly because Scholes lost his head and committed two stupid fouls that he rightly got booked for.
United had weathered the early storm quite well and were beginning to put some very neat passes together when Scholes came in from behind and took out Wilhelmsson. Typical Scholes tackle. Rubbish and needless. Worse was to follow. A break from Roma and Scholes brings down Toto and off he goes.
Eventually Roma made the extra man count when an extra fast corner (helped by their nearly being two balls on the pitch at once) caught United asleep and a deflection took the ball into the net.
However, the Italians didn’t go for the typical Italian shut up shop and win 1-0. No, they tried to put the tie out of United’s reach and were made to pay. An over hit cross was collected by Van Der Sar and he quickly threw it out to Ronaldo who brilliantly took it the length of the pitch and fed it to Solskjaer. Ole put a great cross in for Rooney who instead of heading it brought it down, taking out the defender and fantastically swept it into the net. The vital away goal.
The great result wasn’t to be though as Van Der Sar punched out a swerving shot and it fell to Vucinic to make it 2-1.
Despite only having 10 men for much of the game, United had space and time quite often in midfield and Roma only had mostly long range efforts. This bodes well for the 2nd leg as United should beat the Italians comfortably and progress.
btw, the ref had a shocker. Apart from the Scholes bookings, he failed to book Italians for similar offences; seemed to give a free kick if Rooney went near the ball in the air and was a definite homer.
The real bad news was the crowd trouble. Sky didn’t show much and most of what they showed was the Italian police wading in very much over the top. Don’t really know what was going on, but it is bad news either way.
Popularity: 14% [?]