I Got That Feeling

There's some days when there's no news about and writing this paper round up is a doddle. There's other days when, having gone through my RSS feeds, I have 20 or 30 tabs open in Firefox and I read the same story over and over again in different papers, and try and remember what's where to attempt a coherent passage through the day's stories. Today is one of those days with every paper having 3 or 4 stories on The Carling Cup Final. Note that this is a competition that is called devalued and worthless by the very same papers that don't stop writing about it.
Anyway, a good win yesterday, nice to get the first trophy in the bag. The game was closer than I thought it would be, and credit to Spurs for making a game of it. First twenty minutes it seemed like we were going to walk it, but, while we still controlled it, Spurs made it difficult for us and made a few chances, if Lennon could pass maybe the game would have been tighter still.
I was a little surprised to read in the papers that it was a "dreadful" game. Maybe not having the benefit of the "neutral" position I was too involved in the game to notice this dreadfulness, seemed like a good enough game to me.
All of this negativity is contained very nicely in this article, in The Telegraph, by Kevin Garside. After reading it I'm very much wondering why he didn't just ask for the weekend off, or to be given one of the Premier League games to watch. Here's the second paragraph of his report:

Like the Uefa Cup, a competition that has lost all value, the Carling Cup is not a trophy that generates the requisite intensity among elite clubs to make a showpiece sing. It is not that Manchester United did not want to win it, as such. No team of Sir Alex Ferguson's crosses the white line in retreat. It is that losing it would not have mattered that much.

Couldn't you make a case that, if this was actually true, that we weren't bothered about losing, that that would take off the pressure and therefore it would be the perfect conditions for making " a showpiece sing"(And I'm ignoring the contradiction that on the one hand he says the cup doesn't matter but on the other claims it as a showpiece)? And how often do "showpiece[s] sing"? Did he watch the 2007 FA Cup Final between us and Chelsea?
He continues with more of the same miserableness - "Even the shoot-out lacked drama", "Far better in a way had Burnley and Derby made it to Wembley. Then we would have had a final commensurate with the status of the participants and populated by players who wanted to be there." And not content with whining about this Cup, he proceeds to whine about the FA Cup, even digging up the grave of the year we didn't enter:

We recall how the world's oldest knockout competition suffered a blow to its esteem when United, hemmed in by Football Association politics, elected not to defend it in 2000. It has recovered some of that gloss but, one suspects, had Liverpool's Premier League challenge prevailed a little longer, then a defeat at Craven Cottage would not be sending Ferguson's players rushing to The Priory for therapy.

The Telegraph redeems itself by having a report from Henry Winter, who actually enjoyed the game. He admits it wasn't the best, "interesting but not compelling action", but overcomes that to write a report full of enthusiasm for football, here's an example, describing the penalty shoot out:

Carlos Tevez broke away from the band of United brothers on the halfway line and made the long walk to the spot. It was the only time the livewire Argentinian did not run all afternoon. Tevez’s non-stop movement, creating chances, linking play, even tracking back, was astonishing, particularly when lesser frames were succumbing to cramp. Gomes was beaten with an irresistible low penalty.

So much to get through I won't dwell on this report, worth a read though.
Ben Foster gets a lot of deserved praise today, this from The Daily Star has the longest selection of quotes from Foster and Sir Alex. Foster describes his preparation:

“I did a lot of research for the penalties and I’ve been given a lot of information about their penalty-takers. Just before the shoot-out, I was looking at an iPod with Eric Steele, our goalkeeping coach.

“On it were images of Tottenham players taking penalty kicks. I had been told for O’Hara to stand up, be strong and that it would probably go that way. It was great that it worked out like that."

And praise from Sir Alex:

“The future is his,” he said. “The present belongs to Edwin van der Sar. That’s obvious.

“But, given that experience in a final, that strengthens his own belief. I think he’ll be England’s goalkeeper for the next number of years.

“I just pray he has more luck with injuries than he’s had in the last few years. He is a strong character. He has to be to have come through two cruciate knee injuries.

“You map out a programme, to do this or that after the operation, but it takes a tremendous amount of sacrifice to get through that and recover to do what he did today.”

It also has quotes from Sir ALex and Ronaldo on the yellow card for "diving":

“It’s ridiculous,” said Sir Alex. “I mean, it’s a penalty kick. But I don’t mind that. The referee has a decision to make, but to book him is too easy an option.

“And he couldn’t wait to book him quick enough because it’s Ronaldo, absolutely. That’s twice that has happened this season. If he misses a game because of a yellow card, you can’t appeal a yellow card.”

Ronaldo commented: “If you see the replay on TV you can see he kicked me in the foot and that is why I am limping. He gave me a yellow card and I don’t know why.”

Quotes that I didn't see in any other paper, no agenda there then...
To backtrack slightly, The Mail has a bizarre and petty sentence about Foster and the Ipod:

Sportsmail’s refereeing expert Graham Poll cast doubt on the legality of using the iPod technology but said it had the potential to exploit a loophole in the laws which should be referred to FIFA.

What?!
I might as well mention here the typically banal column of Poll's in The Mail, the height of his analysis is this:

For Ronaldo it could be time to reflect on his reputation which led to Foy not awarding the legitimate penalty - very much a case of the boy who cried wolf.

Genius insight.
There's very good comment by Oliver Holt in The Mirror on the subject of this, and it is the only place where I've seen criticism of Ledley King for his reaction to the booking:

But still English football and referee Chris Foy owed Ronaldo an apology at the end of the game, an apology for rushing to judgment and bowing to our prejudices.

Because when the man voted the best player on the planet was taken out by a mistimed challenge from Ledley King midway through the second half, it should have been a penalty.

No doubt about it. None at all. Ronaldo touched the ball away from the Spurs hero and captain at pace and King caught him as he went past. King didn't touch the ball. He just trod on Ronaldo's right foot. It was inside the box, too. Comfortably. It was as clear a penalty as you can get.

And yet Mr Foy reached for his top pocket, pulled out a yellow card and brandished it in Ronaldo's direction.

Ronaldo fell over in shock, which is what he always does when a decision goes against him, but this time his dismay was understandable. And what did King do? King who we admire so much, King who we acknowledge as a courageous player, a player who plays through pain, an England stalwart, a guy we look up to.

King saw the yellow card and he applauded. He applauded the decision even though he knew he had caught Ronaldo and brought him down.

He should have just accepted his good fortune and walked away but for King to clap like that as if to say that Ronaldo had been caught out did him no credit.

It was a moment in the game when lazy perceptions we have of players are turned on their heads.

Ronaldo, the temperamental foreign diver, against King, the redoubtable English centrehalf.

And yet it was King who had sinned and Ronaldo who was the wronged party.

Daniel Taylor in The Guardian links his praise for Foster with some praise for Van der Sar:

At the end of extra-time the first man to approach Ben Foster and place an arm around his shoulder was dressed in a Manchester United blazer, with a red tie and polished shoes. How typical of Edwin van der Sar that he should come on to the pitch to offer some words of encouragement to the man who has spent the last year or so trying to displace him from the team.

In the same paper David Pleat looks at how Sir Alex neutralized the threat from Lennon in the second half:

At half-time Sir Alex Ferguson encouraged Evra to get tighter, attack Lennon and force the winger to defend. Just before the hour he stiffened his midfield to kill off the threat that Lennon had posed by introducing Anderson who tucked in on the left.

One nice paragraph from Oliver Kay in The Times, summing up our attitude:

Nobody at Old Trafford seems sure if United are on course for a quadruple, a quintuple or a sextuple — depending on whether the Community Shield and the Club World Cup, already under lock and key, are regarded as trophies or mere baubles — but what is certain is that Sir Alex Ferguson’s players have the winning habit, lusting after silver so desperately their victory seemed inevitable as, after 120 minutes of deadlock against a spirited Tottenham Hotspur, they prepared to settle the dispute on a penalty shoot-out.

In summary then: we won, we deserved it, but that, in some quarters, will never go down too well...