Manchester United Lose On Penalties

Wayne Rooney

Manchester United lost 2–0 on pen­alty kicks against their long­time adversar­ies Bar­celona in front of a 47,000 crowd at the Nya Ullevi Sta­dium in Gothen­burg on Wed­nes­day night. Both Luis Nani and Ash­ley Young missed from the pen­alty spot for Manchester United while Xavi Hernan­dez and Ger­ard Pique man­aged to score for Bar­celona.

Bar­celona were the bet­ter side by far dur­ing the first half but Tito Vilanova´s play­ers were unable to cap­it­al­ise on their scor­ing oppor­tun­it­ies. Shortly before the sound of the half time whistle, how­ever, Por­tuguese winger Luis Nani was fouled inside the eight­een yard area by Spain U23 inter­na­tional Cris­tian Tello and Manchester United were cor­rectly awar­ded a pen­alty by Slov­akia ref­eree Mar­tin Balko. Wayne Rooney stepped up to take the spot kick but the Bar­celona net cus­todian had no prob­lems what­so­ever with sav­ing his rather weak shot. Neither side were able to score in the second half either, and the friendly match went into a pen­alty shoot-out which Bar­celona won 2–0 after Luis Nani and Ash­ley Young both missed for Manchester United. Sir Alex Ferguson´s squad now travel to Ger­many to take on Han­nover 96 at the AWD Arena in Han­over this com­ing Sat­urday. Manchester United Team: David de Gea, Ant­o­nio Valen­cia, Rio Ferdin­and, Nemanja Vidic, Patrice Evra, Luis Nani, Paul Scholes, Ander­son, Ash­ley Young, Wayne Rooney, Danny Welbeck.

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