the blog of manchester united

In a night of George Best’s birthday, a 50th anniversary of the Munich Air Disaster, 40 years on after their triumph in 1968, Manchester United has once again captured the crown of Europe after beating Chelsea on penalty shoot-out in a first all English European Club Cup final.

It was a magnificent night for Ryan Giggs who broke Sir Bobby Chalrton’s record appearances for Manchester United with 759 appearances for the club.

United took the lead through Cristiano Ronaldo’s first half header but Chelsea were fortunate to come into first half 1-1 courtesy of Lampard’s equalizer after the initial Essien’s shot has bounced off both Ferdinand and Vidic and fell into Lampard who slotted past van der Sar.  Chelsea came into 2nd half with some dominating period with a couple of shots hitting the post, however the game ended 1-1 after 120 minutes with Drogba dismissed a couple of minutes prior to the end of the game, which proved decisive as he would’ve been one of the top 5 penalty takers.

The penalty drama went high as Ronaldo missed United’s third penalty while Chelsea was able to score all of them, and it went to the 5th kick where John Terry, who miracously was able to play in this game after injury sustained during the last game of Premier League against Bolton, strangely slipped and kick the ball wide touching off the post while van der Sar dived to the wrong way.  Giggs and Anderson scored on subsequent kicks for United and the stage is set for van der Sar to save Nicolas Anelka’s penalty kick and bring home the European Cup once more to Manchester.  GLORY GLORY MANCHESTER UNITED!!!