The lads today arrived in Seoul ahead of their next scheduled match against FC Seoul at the World Cup Stadium on Friday.
I can only imagine the frenzy over there as United are indeed a huge brand over in South Korea--not least due to the fact that it's the native country of Park Ji Sung or Ji Sung Park.
Anyhow, I think they are more f a footballing side than the Malaysians so it will be a relatively tougher game for United but we should do okay. Most of the players have tasted a bit of football on the pitch so the fatigue and carelessness should be getting out of the players by now and soon, we should start seeing the kind of football that we are going to play last season--at least that's what the Audi Cup will demand.
Stories making the news today are not so heavy that they demand commenting about but Fergie holds no doubt that Ben Foster will be England's goalkeeper...if only he could stay fit and prove his worth.
Now that is the line that I've kind of gotten tired of hearing these past few weeks. Michael Owen, Hagreaves, Wes Brown, Ben Foster, Rio Ferdinand--the list goes on. It seems as though our performance next season largely if not entirely depends on whether our players stay fit. I'd like to think that manager, players and fans of United alike are aware that injuries--regardless how many they are, are part and parcel of a footballing season. For instance I expect Michael Owen and two or three more players to pull a hamstring some time next season. Then one or two lads will be out with flu or illness for a game and so on. Of course the only thing that you do not expect is that a player will be ruled out for the whole season--but it usually happens. For instance last season, Chelsea lost Joe Cole, United lost Hargreaves and Wes, Arsenal lost Tomas Rosicky and Eduardo--all for nearly the entire league campaign.
This is why I think that managers ought to work around solving foreseeable problems during pre-season. The whole world knows how good we can perform in a season without injuries but they don't know how we can perform next season if we had major injuries to our stars. I'm therefore happy to see the likes of Macheda, Gibson and Fabio being made part of first team pre-season training and on the tour as they could be the ones that we look up to when the going gets tough.
Oh and just to make it clear how popular United are in South Korea, 1.2 million people have Manchester United credit cards!
Labels: PRE-SEASON
