Manchester United vs. Inter Milan Match Review

So last night I was able to find a stream of the Manchester United v. Inter game that was played in DC.  First off I had to laugh at ESPN’s coverage of the game, it was an English squad and an Italian squad, playing in America, and yet the only commentary that I could get was Spanish… nevertheless, the game showed good promise for the Red Devils.  Not exactly an exciting game from an attacking standpoint, with only 2 shots on goal for Manchester and 1 for Inter, but as the score line would lead you to believe, a great defensive battle.  LVG was very pleased speaking with the media after the game, praising his defense for a stellar showing, however, not much was said of the offense.  This, unfortunately, can be a side effect of the 3-5-2 (5-3-2 depending on how you look at it) that van Gaal is running this year, and set the Dutch team up with at the World Cup.  A strong centralized defense keeps the ball to the wings where it gets knocked around for a while trying to find a way to break through the wall that you’ve created in the middle.  If neither team is willing to push to hard on the attack, the game can grind to a halt.

Luckily we did see some flashes of attack, primarily after the 80^th minute from Manchester United, a period which saw a beautiful bit of skill by Ashley Young down the wing to create an opportunity off the head of one of his strikers.  But the game went to a draw at full time and this being the ICC, we went to penalties.  Manchester was perfect from the penalty spot.  All 5 shots were struck in a textbook position, Inter GK Carrizio truly had no chance to save any, despite trying to play some mind games on the 4^th shot with Shinji Kagawa, daring the midfielder to score to the right side of the goal (which he did).  De Gea (who came in as a substitution for Lindgaard at half) got a hand to Inter Milan’s third shot before it went bar down for the goal, and then guessed correctly on the 4^th shot, which saw the ball blasted off the crossbar for the only miss of the shootout.

After the game, van Gaal hailed this as the best game of the three that have been played under his new reign, and as far as fundamentals go I’d have to agree.  United seem well put together, communicating and crisp with their passes.  If they are able to keep this up, and hopefully pick up a few weapons during this trade window, we could absolutely see a year in which Manchester makes a run at the league title.




Be sure to check out our previous post here.
(Photos from BleacherReport and Twitter)