Manchester U 4 Schalke 1

Oliveira Anderson

Man­chester Uni­ted 4 Schalke 1, Old Traf­ford, UEFA Cham­pi­ons Lea­gue Semi-Fi­nal Sec­ond Leg, May 4, 2011. Man­chester Uni­ted be­at Bundes­liga club Schalke 4-1 to book them­selves a place in the Cham­pi­ons Lea­gue Fi­nal at Wemb­ley. An­tonio Va­lencia and Dar­ron Gib­son net­ted a goal each be­fore the break, whi­le Oli­veira An­der­son hit a brace in the sec­ond half.

Man­chester Uni­ted had beaten Schalke 2-0 in front of a 54,000 crowd at the Velt­ins Arena thro­ugh goals from Ry­an Gig­gs and Way­ne in the fir­st leg on the 26th of April 2011 and were ex­pec­ted to reach the Cham­pi­ons Lea­gue Fi­nal wi­th too many prob­lems. And al­though Por­tuguese wing­er Lu­is Nani was guilty of over egging the pud­ding a little, two ex­cel­lent goals from An­tonio Va­lencia and Dar­ron Gib­son re­spect­ively dur­ing the fir­st ha­lf had Man­chester Uni­ted in con­trol, and af­ter the re­sump­tion a bril­liant brace from Oli­veira An­der­son gave the hosts a com­fort­able vic­tory. Even tho­ugh Sir Al­ex Fer­guson had made nine changes from the te­am which won the re­verse ga­me in Gelsen­kirchen, the ho­me out­fit dom­in­ated the ga­me from start to fin­ish and ran out easy 4-1 win­ners in the end. Man­chester Uni­ted de­servedly went in­to a 1-0 lead in the 25th min­ute of the fix­ture when ver­sat­ile de­fender An­tonio Va­lencia smash­ed a low drive pa­st Schalke and Ger­many net­mind­er Manuel Neuer and in­to the bot­tom left hand cor­ner. And just five min­utes la­ter in the ga­me the hosts sco­red their sec­ond when Va­lencia fou­nd Dar­ron Gib­son who power­ed an un­stoppable ef­fort pa­st the away goal­keeper and in­to the net be­fore Jose Manuel Jurado pulled one back for Schalke af­ter 35 min­utes of play.

Man­chester Uni­ted star­ted the sec­ond pe­riod equally well and hit the vis­it­ors wi­th every­thing but the kit­chen sink. The Man­cuni­ans ev­entually sco­red a third on 72 min­utes when Lu­is Nani fou­nd Oli­veira An­der­son who ma­naged to con­trol the ball in­side the box, and wi­th pres­sure from a de­fender, he ham­mered ho­me. With­in three min­utes An­der­son had his sec­ond as Nani put the ball on a plate for the mid­field man who eas­ily put the ball in­to the empty net to make the score 4-1 to The Reds. Man­chester Uni­ted Te­am: Ed­win van der Sar, Ra­fael da Silva, Jon­ny Evans, John O’Shea, Chris Small­ing, An­tonio Va­lencia, An­der­son, Dar­ron Gib­son, Nani, Paul Scho­les, Di­m­it­ar Ber­batov. Man­chester Uni­ted Sub­stitutes: To­masz Kusz­czak, Ne­manja Vid­ic, Pat­rice Ev­ra, Dar­ren Fletch­er, Ry­an Gig­gs, Javi­er Her­nandez, Mi­chael Owen. Schalke Te­am: Manuel Neuer, Ser­gio Es­cudero, Be­ne­dikt Howedes, Chris­toph Met­zeld­er, Kyriakos Papado­poulos, At­suto Uchida, Al­ex­an­der Baum­jo­hann, Ju­li­an Draxler, Jose Manuel Jurado, Jef­fer­son Far­fan, Raul Gon­zalez Blanco. Sub­stitutes: Math­i­as Schober, Joel Ma­tip, Lu­kas Schmitz, Ali Karimi, Hans Sarpei, Edu, Klaas Jan Huntelaar.

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