Watching Vidić struggle today inevitably put me in mind of the moment in Predator when the commandos find the infrared Nickelodeon goo spattered on the foliage and Dutch growls, “If it bleeds, we can kill it.” Which doesn’t get Jesse Ventura his entrails back, of course.
Read More: Liverpool, Manchester United, The Occasional Match Summary
by Brian Phillips · March 14, 2009
Yeah, even his face looked a bit like that of Arnold Schwarzenegger at the end of the first Terminator movie; you were just waiting for the red light in his eyes to fade away…
Exactly! This is giving me a whole new framework for processing my sense that Man Utd are mechanical but not boring…
This reminds me of Tarcisio Burgnich’s quote about Pele: ‘I told myself before the game, he’s just made of skin and bone, like everybody else. But I was wrong’
My sense of United this year is that everybody stands around waiting for the teammate to dribble and shoot – the movement off the ball is nonexistent.
i too have found that somehow Man U have found a way to make this year’s unprecedented quintuple conquest, which if realized will then qualify as quite simply the greatest season in all of team sports’ history, robotic & workmanlike and devoid of any character (I might forever be the sole member of the “Sir Alex is creepy” club). Normally, looking towards statistics for answers is fool’s gold in football, but I’d noticed something a month or two ago and that ‘mechanical’ description has piqued my interest further.
It’d take a substantial check to have me go through Ronaldo’s goals last year to find which ones he scored during the run of play with his feet (meaning not from a set piece, PK, or a header–ie the goals that I expect and want Ronaldo to score) but it seemed as though a decent majority of them fit that description. Shit, you score 42 (in 49 games), on sheer quantity alone there must be, right? This year’s tally of 18 (in 40 games, including todays) proved much less daunting, and revealed a mere 5 goals scored in the aforementioned way. Of those 5, two were against West Brom in a single match, and one was scored with his thigh from a low cross he couldn’t reach with his head.
That means the other thirteen were from penalties, (utterly brilliant) free kicks, or heading in a Giggs’ corner or (occasional) cross, none of which particularly highlight what we’ve come to deify Ronaldo for.
Great point J – the biggest diff between last year’s United and this year is that Ronaldo’s setpiece efficiency is way low.
Whether that is a temporary dip in form, or one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse galloping towards the doomsday of exciting and fun football, only time will tell.
One things for sure, this United team looks better in a statistian’s book than on the pitch. Yawn. Shades of Italy 2006 come to mind…
Did you guys notice Vidic went for the penis take down on Gerrard?
If you’re going to grab, might as well be by the handle.