United face tricky task at Villarreal
MANCHESTER UNITED’S opening encounter with Villarreal tonight, who are fresh to the Champions League but who surprised everyone in Spain last season with the sheer quality of their football, is in golfing terms a tricky par three.
It is negotiable but the dangers are obvious, especially as Manchester United again start without Roy Keane, who may be absent for up to a month with a hamstring injury.
Although Sir Alex Ferguson talked up Alan Smith’s newlyfound abilities as a holding midfielder, the Manchester United manager knows they are a very different proposition without their captain. In the past two years of Premiership football United average 1.5 points a game without him and 2.1 when he plays.
Ferguson yesterday stressed that playing Smith as a midfielder could no longer be counted as an experiment and remarked that Juan Riquelme and Diego Forlan would provide more of a test than the Manchester City attack did in Saturday’s derby. He had no explanation as to why Forlan, who after two hard-working but wretchedly unsuccessful years at Old Trafford, became La Liga’s leading scorer in his fi rst season with Spain’s most improbable success story. Villarreal are the smallest town in Spain to play topfl ight football and United, strangely, opted not to train at their El Madrigal Stadium, partly because of its remoteness and partly for fear of cutting up a newly-relaid pitch.
Despite the pain caused by the recent death of his father at the age of 46, Cristiano Ronaldo has travelled with the squad. The young midfielder’s state of mind can only be guessed at, although Ferguson pointed out: “the fact that he came into training shows he is comfortable with the situation. The funeral is on Saturday but he has spent time with his mother and you hope that the football pitch can be a release. But I don’t worry about him. The boy has a hunger to play football matches.”
Beautiful though their football is, Villarreal are a side who are neither in form — one point from their opening two league fi xtures — and who may be susceptible to pressure.
After dominating three-quarters of their Champions League qualifier with Everton at both Goodison and El Madrigal they panicked badly at the fi nish and might not have qualified at all had Perluigi Collina allowed Duncan Ferguson’s equaliser.
As United set off for Spain yesterday, Rio Ferdinand and Wayne Rooney were accosted at Manchester Airport by a Liverpool fan offering them a T-shirt that boasted of Merseyside’s five European Cups. They declined the offer, although Liverpool’s triumph in Istanbul has unquestionably upped the ante for Ferguson. When asked what his feelings were when Steven Gerrard lifted the trophy, the United manager said he had none, although you suspected there were some rather deeper emotions on that May night. Villarreal: ( probable 4- 4- 2) Vieira; Rodriguez, Arruabarrena, Kromkamp, Pena; Sorin, Alvarez, Riquelme, Josico; Figueroa, Forlan. Manchester United: ( probable 4- 4- 1- 1) Van der Sar; O’Shea, Ferdinand, Silvestre, Heinze; Fletcher, Smith, Scholes, Giggs; Rooney; Van Nistelrooy. Referee: K Nielsen ( Denmark).