Manchester United Draw At Marseille

Dar­ren Fletcher

Manchester United man­aged to col­lect a most im­port­ant draw in the Cham­pi­ons League Round 16 match against reign­ing French League Cham­pi­ons Mar­seille at a full packed and noisy St­ade Ve­lo­drome on Wed­nes­day night. Yesterday´s goal­less en­counter didn’t com­prise much ex­cite­ment, how­ever, as Mar­seille as well as Manchester United struggled to cre­ate any note­worthy scor­ing chances against solid de­fens­ive per­form­ances on both sides.

The Reds had the bet­ter of the first half and Dar­ren Fletcher got a de­cent op­por­tun­ity on eight minutes, but his low ef­fort was saved by the goal­keeper. There was drama at the Theatre of Drums just four minutes after the half time break, how­ever, when Manchester United de­fender Ne­manja Vidic re­ceived a de­lib­er­ate el­bow to the face after chal­len­ging for a ball with Mar­seille for­ward Brandao on the edge of the Manchester United pen­alty area. Ap­par­ently be­liev­ing in sur­vival of the fit­test, Ger­man ref­eree Fe­lix Brych de­cided to take no ac­tion at all against the Brazilian who more or less sur­repti­tiously used vi­ol­ence to meet his ends. Al­though the Gal­lic le­gion­naires grew into the game in the second half, the home side found them­selves un­able to break down the rock steady Manchester United de­fence. Di­m­itar Ber­batov al­most man­aged to thread the ball through to Por­tuguese in­ter­na­tional Nani with just ten minutes re­main­ing on the clock, but the goal­keeper beat the free flow­ing flank­man by inches. Des­pite the some­what hos­tile at­mo­sphere at the St­ade Ve­lo­drome last night, the Manchester United play­ers ef­fi­ciently man­aged to sub­due the bois­ter­ous Mar­seilles sup­port­ers tak­ing a valu­able draw back to Manchester.

Sir Alex Fer­guson even­tu­ally re­placed North­ern Ire­land in­ter­na­tional Dar­ron Gib­son with ever­green work­horse Paul Scholes in the 72nd minute of the encounter.

The Of­fi­cial Il­lus­trated His­tory of Manchester United