Conquering The World

The holiday in Beijing provided so much entertainment and fun that I missed both the world club cup games. Beijing exceeded all my expectations and it's a city I'm looking forward to visit again. The food is cheap and good, and the people are honest and friendly.

Top of the World
While I was taking time off to enjoy myself immersely, gorging on exortic food, ranging from donkey to dog, United went on to crown themselves world champions against some third-rated opponents. That's right, third-rated opponents. I wouldn't consider Gamba nor LDU anywhere near the kind of competition provided by top European sides.

We played at half-pace and thrashed Gamba 5-3. The score only looked respectable due to defensive lapses when we were already 5-1 up.

As for LDU, they are a shell of the team that won the South American version of the Champions League. Most of their influential players have already left, and it's little wonder that they fell to a 10-men United. The hard truth is that the South American teams just aren't good enough to face their European counter-parts. Most of the best players from the continent now ply their trade in the top European clubs, while the few remaining ones play for the bigger teams in Brazil and Argentina. LDU Quito, from Ecuador, is really one of the smaller teams.

So officially we're now the best team in the world. The additional silverware is great, but let's not get distracted from the true prize, the EPL and the Champions League.

Champions League
Seapking of the Champions League, the draw to the next round really screwed us. We somehow managed to get Inter Milan from the draw. It's going to be hard facing the champions from Italy. And the task will get much harder without the services of Vidic, who will serve a suspension for his red card in the world club cup finals.

This is one matchup I'm not looking forward to.

Evra's Ban
Plenty seems to have happened while I was away, so I'm cramping it all here today.

Looks like the club is not going to appeal. 4 matches seems like a ridiculous number of games to miss for an off-the-pitch incident. It seems from the length of documents released by the FA, they are trying to confuse than to make a concerted effort to address the punishment. In any case, we can only hope this sets the precedence for consistancy. Somehow I seriously doubt it though. One rule for United, another for the others.