Real Sociedad 0 Man United 0

Re­al So­ciedad 0 Man­chester Uni­ted 0, Ano­eta Sta­dium, UEFA Cham­pi­ons Lea­gue Group Sta­ge, Nov­ember 5, 2013. Man­chester Uni­ted ma­naged a goal­less draw ag­ainst Primera Di­vi­sion te­am Re­al So­cidead in San Se­basti­an in the Basque Coun­try. And al­though no goals were sco­red in the ga­me, the meet­ing nev­er­the­less pro­duced plenty of ac­tion and drama.

Fol­low­ing a re­l­at­ively com­fort­able 3-1 Pre­mier Lea­gue vic­tory ag­ainst re­leg­a­tion can­did­ates Ful­ham at Craven Cot­tage, Man­chester Uni­ted re­turned to cup com­pet­i­tion wi­th a cru­cial Cham­pi­ons Lea­gue Group Sta­ge mat­ch ag­ainst Basque club Re­al So­cidead. In the re­verse meet­ing two weeks earli­er, Uni­ted had edged out La Re­al by 1-0 at their Old Traf­ford ho­me thro­ugh an early own goal from cent­ral de­fender Inigo Mar­tinez in the sec­ond min­ute of pro­ceed­ings, and Da­vid Moyes´s men were slight fa­vour­ites to win the re­turn fix­ture in San Se­basti­an. Man­chester Uni­ted, who were with­out key play­ers Mi­chael Car­rick, Tom Clev­er­ley, Jon­ny Evans and Ra­fael da Silva, came clo­se to tak­ing the lead al­ready in the tenth min­ute of the clash at the Es­ta­dio Mu­ni­cip­al de Ano­eta, but Ja­pan­ese mid­field com­batant Shinji Ka­gawa power­ed his ef­fort wide from the edge of the eight­een-yard area. The Pre­mier Lea­gue out­fit then had an­oth­er great scor­ing op­por­tun­ity when Mex­ic­an in­ter­na­tion­al Javi­er Her­nandez missed an open goal af­ter five min­utes of play in the sec­ond half.

In the 64th min­ute of the con­test, Moyes op­ted for a double re­place­ment as he sent on Robin van Per­sie and Ash­ley Young for Her­nandez and Way­ne Roo­ney re­spect­ively. And on­ly one min­ute la­ter, Van Per­sie al­most put Man­chester Uni­ted ahead when his power­ful shot from clo­se ran­ge crashed ag­ainst the goal post. Then, in the 70th min­ute of ac­tion, Young was fouled in­side the area by de­fens­ive mid­fielder Markel Ber­gara, but fel­low sub­sti­tute Van Per­sie failed to con­vert the sub­sequent pen­alty kick. To top it all, Man­chester Uni­ted were re­duced to ten men dur­ing the clos­ing sta­ges when Bel­gian mid­fielder Mar­ou­ane Fel­laini was giv­en his sec­ond yel­low card by Itali­an ref­er­ee Nic­ola Rizzoli. Man­chester Uni­ted re­mained top of Cham­pi­ons Lea­gue Group A, how­ever, wi­th eight points gain­ed from four ga­mes played, one point ahead of Ger­man Bundes­liga si­de Bay­er Lever­kusen. Re­al So­ciedad Te­am: Clau­dio Bravo, Car­los Mar­tinez, Al­berto De La Bella, Inigo Mar­tinez, Mikel Gon­zalez, Markel, Ruben, Da­vid Zur­u­tuza, Ant­oine Griez­mann, Iman­ol Agir­retxe, Car­los Vela. Sub­stitutes: Enaut Zu­bikarai, Jon An­sotegi, Gonzalo Castro, Gorka Elu­stondo, Xabi Pri­eto, Har­is Se­fer­ovic. Man­chester Uni­ted Te­am: Da­vid de Gea, Rio Fer­dinand, Pat­rice Ev­ra, Chris Small­ing, Ne­manja Vid­ic, Va­lencia, Shinji Ka­gawa, Javi­er Her­nandez, Mar­ou­ane Fel­laini, Ry­an Gig­gs, Way­ne Roo­ney. Sub­stitutes: An­ders Linde­gaard, Phil Jones, Ash­ley Young, Al­ex­an­der Buttner, An­der­son, Nani, Robin van Persie.

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