Red Devils

CONGRATULATIONS MANCHESTER UNITED!
Manchester United have won the Premier League and the Champions League rounding out an impressive season. They clearly deserved this win as nerve-racking as it was. The whole team played strong on the less than ideal field conditions.

To quickly shut down Chelsea fans, Chelsea should have been down two players by the end of the first half due to red cards that should have been handed out. A cleats-up slide tackle into Ronald in the first quarter of the game should have been one and Makelele should have been sent out with a series of yellows on at least 3 other occasions. i was waiting for Teves to stomp him into the ground. J. Cole broke up a Man U push by sitting on the top of the 18 until the game stopped faking injury only to jump up as soon as the trainers made it out, reminiscent of an Italian World Cup performance. Drogba? Look, you hit someone - you get a red card. He was right in front of two refs, he should have known better. He also may have beat out Ronaldinho as the ugliest soccer player in the world to tie on a pair of boots. Don't even get me going about Ballack.

i do sympathize with Terry though. He is a good player and a true gentleman of the sport. His amazing block took away what should have been Manchester's 3rd goal in the first half. Field conditions also came into play with his mis-taken penalty shot. If Ronaldo wasn't hot-shotting it wouldn't have mattered anyway. Even the announcer called his stutter-step before he even placed the ball.

The conditions truely were sub-par as both teams were sliding all over the place and many were nursing pulls and strains. New turf flown in earlier in the week? No time was left for it to root properly and at times it looked like whole sections slid like carpet runners under falling players. Add on rain and midnight in Moscow temperatures and things were probably even too skwooshy for Spongebob.

Manchester deserved this win. They had a majority of the possession, they had double the successful passes, and more importantly, they played like gentleman against a dirty team. Seeing Giggs calm the team back into solid play after his substitution in was impressive. Van der Sar played very well (with some help from his best friends the posts) and Carrick was amazing. With strong coverage Ronaldo and Rooney still found room to set plays up and Scholes, bloody and all still came through with the set-up. Fernando and the back line held Drogba tight.

Boy did they look happy, but i think Sir Alex had the widest smile of all. i can't wait until next fall.