Manchester United Take On Schalke

Nemanja Vidic

Manchester United travel to Ger­many to take on Schalke tonight in the Cham­pi­ons League Semi Final first leg. The Reds will miss Dim­itar Ber­batov who is still suf­fer­ing from the groin strain that kept him out of the game against Ever­ton, while Ji-Sung Park and Nemanja Vidic could both return to action. As for the hosts Tim Hoog­land, Klaas-Jan Hunte­laar, Mario Gav­ran­ovic, Peer Kluge, Chris­top Mor­itz and Chris­tian Pander are all injured.

Sir Alex Fer­guson: “Schalke have beaten every team they have played in the Cham­pi­ons League at home this sea­son, includ­ing Valen­cia and Inter Milan. Taken in isol­a­tion, that’s fant­astic form and there is no way Manchester United are going to be led into believ­ing that this is easy. This is a dif­fi­cult game for us and we have no choice but to treat it that way. Schalke never looked like los­ing the game and that’s quite a credit to them in terms of play­ing a side like Inter Milan. They always looked in com­plete con­trol and, even in the good spells that Inter had, they never looked like los­ing. It’s a semi final now and, any semi final you go into, you know it is going to be dif­fi­cult. I don’t like jump­ing ahead. We´ve to deal with Schalke first. If we can man­age that, I don’t care who we play in the final.”

The Offi­cial Illus­trated His­tory of Manchester United