Quite often, watching football is not pleasurable, and yet there is certainly enjoyment there. The "pleasure principle" is about reaching a point of stasis, of quiet happiness, unruffled by either excessive pain or excessive pleasure, and football is quite the opposite, enduring moments of pain for moments of pure ecstasy.So today I shall start magnanimously by praising Alan Hansen's Telegraph column. First off he praises Ronaldo, pretty much without qualification:
You do not play terribly one game and great the next; you battle, you show grit, you scrape out a performance, while the best players, such as Cristiano Ronaldo, find a moment that sets them apart. At one stage Ronaldo did not look like he wanted to be there. He had sloppily given the ball away for Villa's second goal, but out of nowhere he manages to put the ball right in the corner of the net from 20 yards and the game turns on its head. The great players are the ones who manage to do this when things are going badly for them.And then remarks on Liverpool's possible reaction to the game:
it appeared impossible for United to come back in this game. The play was open, Villa were attacking at will and had pace to burn. If it had been a race over 20 yards Villa would have won every time. Liverpool, by contrast, had a measured performance against Fulham and were always on top. They had a host of chances and never looked like they were going to lose the game. It was merely a question of when they were going to score.
This makes it all the harder for the Liverpool players, who, after watching this amazing turnaround, will be absolutely distraught. They are convinced that they are right back in the title race and then United produce two late goals out of nothing. So Liverpool will be affected by this. Anyone who tells you that this type of result does not affect individuals or the team are the ones who have not been there and do not understand what has happened.
Fairly obviously the papers are absolutely full of praise for Macheda - The Independent:
a goal of historic proportions from another of the academy prodigies whom Sir Alex Ferguson keeps receiving and whom Rafael Benitez, much to his own fury, does not. If 17-year-old Federico Macheda – known as "Kiko" to his team-mates and unknown to pretty much everyone else – never scores again at Old Trafford, his extraordinary 93rd-minute goal, securing a 3-2 win over Aston Villa and taking United back to the top of the table last night, assigns him a permanent place in United folklore.And it wasn't just his goal that was good, although it certainly was, The Sun's Steven Howard describing it like this, "In one outrageous movement that turned the clock back to the days of Johan Cruyff, the Italian wrote himself into United folklore", The Guardian point to his 100% pass completion and The Mail describe his play thus:
From the moment he came on, Macheda looked like a player born to perform on the stage they call the Theatre of Dreams. The confident swagger, the demands for the ball and a touch of arrogance when he felt he had been fouled by Curtis Davies in the penalty area.And gets similar praise from Sir Alex, quoted in The Times:
“Kiko's whole contribution was marvellous,” Ferguson said. “His second-phase play was fantastic, he linked up well and took his goal brilliantly. He was a threat all the time. He's only 17 years old but if you're good enough at this club, you'll play. I need to keep his feet on the ground as he'll get a lot of publicity in the next few days and he'll need to handle that.”Other comments, quoted in The Guardian from Sir Alex express a certain enjoyment at work:
What, Ferguson was asked, had his gameplan been in those final moments? "Gamble," he pronounced firmly. "Winning is the name of the game at this club. We play the right way and we deserve the result because we always try to win. Risks are part of football and this club has been that way for a long, long time. I love the thrill of it myself. I love to see that kind of adventure. Yes, we take terrible risks and we don't defend properly. But there's always a goal threat from us and the chance to win a match."I also thought Macheda's post match interview was brilliant, quotes mashed together from The Mirror, and The Sun:
Macheda, whose only action in a United shirt until yesterday was in the reserves, hugged his father Pascuale and friends in the Stretford End following his amazing strike. "This is a dream for me," said Macheda, known as 'Kiko' by his team-mates.
"It was my dream to score on my debut and I'm so happy that it was the winner.
"No-one had really heard of me but I guess that's all going to change after this. I ran to my family and friends after I scored because it was a special moment for us."
“This is the day of my dreams. I was going to Italy to play in the international team and the gaffer said I should stay and be on the bench.
“He told me to play and keep it simple. My dad and my family were watching and they deserved this goal.”
There's an interesting quote from Sir Alex in The Guardian - the first bit is quoted everywhere, the second bit I only saw here:
"Everyone is talking about the challenge coming from Liverpool," said Ferguson. "But we accept that challenge. Funnily enough I think the winner of the Liverpool-Chelsea [Champions League] tie will be our biggest threat. Whoever wins that, it will be a big step forward for them."This was a bullish Ferguson, confident that his team had got the 4-1 defeat to Liverpool out of their system. "Against Liverpool nothing seemed to go right for us, but I still felt we were the better side. [Liverpool's] goals came from errors, the like of which we have not seen for a long time, and you simply cannot do anything about them in terms of preparation or tactics. If Liverpool had sliced us open with a spell of brilliant, attacking football, I would take a different view, but they didn't outplay us.
"Four long balls down the middle, thanks to our mistakes, led to goals. What is important to me is the way the team played as a unit and in my book we did OK. We had 62% of the possession and the way we were playing when we went in front I don't think even the staunchest of Liverpool fans could envisage their team coming out on top."
To finish with a couple of gripes; first off, nearly all the papers go for the Ronaldo-to-blame-for Villa's-second approach, and while I agree he probably should have made an effort to win the ball back, the fact that our defence was so hopeless after that is only really highlighted in one place, The Independent:
After Villa's first goal, Ferguson moved Neville to right-back from where, in the 58th minute, he got nowhere near Carew as the Norwegian ran down the left wing and clipped a cross on to the head of Agbonlahor for Villa's second. Evra and Nani did a hopeless job of getting to the cross.My other gripe is just with Martin O'Neill's ridiculous suggestion, quoted in The Daily Star:
He was surprised at the five minutes stoppage time added by ref Mike Riley saying: "The five minutes wasn't a surprise, but he wouldn't have played five at Villa Park.(One pedantic quibble - the report says he was surprised in the sentence building up to O'Neill saying "I wasn't surprised") He actually claimed that the board showing 5 minutes unsettled his players. First off, if memory serves, the goal was timed at 92:10, so don't see his problem, and second, if his team are going to be disturbed by the number 5 appearing on a board then they probably deserve to lose...
(There was a lot of other aspects of the game looked at in the papers today, but I've only had about 6 hours sleep since Friday and all the Firefox tabs full of writing I had open were making my head swim, so I tried to focus on just the most important things so I can collapse on my keyboard... I really hope it makes sense, too tired to check it...)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment