I'll Never Be Anybody's Hero Now

The friendly yesterday and an interview with Rio make up today's fare.
Rio has a fair bit to say. On last season:

"At first I thought it was a bad season, that was my first reaction," he said. "But as time goes on and the days and the weeks pass, you judge it with a clearer head. We won three trophies and reached a second-successive Champions League final. But when you are travelling around in the summer you are never too far from a news stand and I would normally buy a sports magazine but this time I didn't. I was to-ing and fro-ing in my mind if I should have done this or that but it is time to put it to bed. It is over now, it's time to look forward to a new season."

On the new season, new signings and losing Ronaldo:

“We will be a lot more compact as a team without Cristiano.

“He gave us so much going forward, his talent allowed him to be left further up the field than some other players in that position, because you knew what you would get out of him when the ball got to him.

“We will be harder to break down but we have to keep that same potency up front.

“Now we have Michael Owen who has that knack of putting the ball in the back of net and if he keeps fit this season he’s got a great chance of rewriting his career.

“But apart from Michael, the other forwards and midfielders are going to have to take responsibility to make up the goals that have gone out of our team.

“I have every confidence in the players we have to do that.” ...

“I’m like any fan,” he said. “I’m always texting the coaching staff during the summer, wondering who we are going to sign and what’s going on.

“But I wouldn’t have been bothered if we didn’t sign anybody and had to go into this season with the same nucleus of players because I know we have a talented squad already. The encouraging thing is that I know there is so much more to come from our younger players, who have given us glimpses of their talent, like Anderson, Nani, Macheda, Welbeck, Evans, Darron Gibson.

“There is much more, maybe still 10 to 20 per cent more, to come from each of those players in the next couple of years or so. They will be like new signings.”

On Owen:

"Initially I was surprised when he signed. But I was thinking like a fan. If you look at his stats, he has played a lot more games than I thought but after seeing him close up I am very confident we have signed the right type of player. You can understand why the manager has put faith in him. He needs the ball delivered into dangerous areas and other people – the forwards and midfielders – are going to have to take responsibility for that because goals have gone out of our team and they need to be made up. One thing I'm sure of is that Ronaldo's going will bring the best out in our players. We know he scored a lot of goals in the last two seasons for us, especially against the lower teams in the league. He'd get a couple of goals a game against them on a regular basis. But we've got players who we know are capable of doing that and now, whoever's on the pitch, I'm sure they can go out there, do that job and fill the gap."

Macheda takes most of the headlines (ignoring the godlike status of Park and concentrating on football anyway). From The Times:

Federico Macheda staked another claim in the race to take over the mantle of Cristiano Ronaldo at Old Trafford when he scored in Manchester United’s 3-2 win over Seoul in the World Cup Stadium yesterday. It was his second goal on the club’s four-match pre-season tour to the Far East.

Macheda may have a long way to go to succeed the multitalented Portuguese in the affections of the United fans. Yet the 17-year-old Italian is uncannily similar in height and gait and has already impressed Sir Alex Ferguson, the manager. ...

“Macheda’s goal was excellent,” Ferguson said. “The lad has a real chance and his movement is very good. He does well on the shoulder of the last defender and he showed that tonight with the goal he scored."

A bit more detail on his performance here:

In these warm-up games, Macheda has done his cause no harm at all, particularly in the latest and undoubtedly most competitive of the four matches United will complete in the Far East.

After delivering a decent left-wing cross that Ryan Giggs completely missed and failing to control an astute pass from the Welshman that would have set him up for the type of spectacular curling effort that he announced his arrival with against Aston Villa last season, Macheda found the net just after half-time.

Strike partner Rooney supplied the killer cross field pass, which sent the teenager scampering clear of a static Seoul defence. The cool way he took his chance justified Ferguson’s belief that Macheda is the best finisher at United, better even than Michael Owen.

A brief look at Park's reception:

The main event for the 64,000 South Koreans inside the World Cup Stadium was seeing national hero Park take to the field, however.

Every big screen shot of the midfielder merely sat on the bench generated huge noise, with the decibels rising even higher when he warmed up down the touchline after the interval.

A noise counter on the big screens reached maximum when Park entered the fray on 74 minutes by replacing Michael Carrick.

But the 28-year-old could not provide the goal that would pretty much have lifted the roof off the stadium had he scored during his brief appearance.

Gary Neville had to return home with an injury:

"Gary Neville tweaked his groin yesterday in training," Ferguson said yesterday after his side's 3-2 win over FC Seoul. "He will probably be ready in about 10 days. It would have been silly to keep him here if he was not going to play so we sent him home."

And just some brief words on Steven Gerrard to finish off with. Of course there's not a whiff of criticism of him (s'far as I saw anyway) to be found. The best I could do was this paragraph, which if you read its understated tone as being a bit sarcastic, you can just about get away with thinking it's critical:

the jury at Liverpool Crown Court accepted that he repeatedly punched Marcus McGee, a company director, in self-defence because he thought he himself was about to be attacked.

And I'm grasping at straws by reading this in the same way:

the footballer approached him as he sat on a barstool. John Doran, Gerrard's friend, elbowed McGee in the face, making him reel backwards and forwards. Fearing that he was about to be attacked, Gerrard landed three uppercuts on his face.

It does at least point out that Gerrard approached him. Wonder if he did that in self defence as well? Kind of like the US went to war to topple Saddam Hussien in Iraq for national security...