Cluj 1 Manchester United 2

CFR Cluj 1 Man­chester Uni­ted 2, Dr. Con­stantin Rad­ules­cu Sta­dium, UEFA Cham­pi­ons Lea­gue Group Sta­ge, Oct­ober 2, 2012. The dy­nam­ic duo of Robin van Per­sie and Way­ne Roo­ney bo­th im­pressed ag­ainst Ro­mani­an Liga One si­de CFR Cluj in Cluj-Na­po­ca. Man­chester Uni­ted came from a goal down to ev­entually over­come The White Bur­gundies by 2-1 cour­tesy of a bril­liant brace from Van Per­sie who was set up twice by his fel­low front­man Rooney.

Af­ter 26 min­utes of play, Robin van Per­sie net­ted his fir­st goal of the Cham­pi­ons Lea­gue mat­ch ag­ainst CFR Cluj off a free-kick as­sist from Way­ne Roo­ney. Then, in the 49th min­ute of pro­ceed­ings, the goal plun­der­er ex­traordin­aire fou­nd the back of the net for the sec­ond time thanks to yet an­oth­er as­sist from his double act part­ner. Fol­low­ing his move from Ar­senal at the be­gin­ning of the 2012-13 sea­son, Van Per­sie had now racked up eight goals in ten ap­pear­ances in all com­pet­i­tions so far. As for Roo­ney, he could­n’t pos­sibly have hoped for a bet­ter strik­ing part­ner than the high-fly­ing Dutch­man. Sir Al­ex Fer­guson: “It was a fant­ast­ic fin­ish but what a nice ball from Way­ne Roo­ney. I tho­ught he hit it too far in front of Robin van Per­sie but his speed to get to the ball and deft­ness of touch were in­cred­ible. Every­one tho­ught it was go­ing to be a mir­acle com­bin­a­tion. The best qual­ity bo­th of them have is that they can turn a ga­me. That is an im­port­ant fea­ture. It does­n’t really mat­ter if they have a per­son­al com­bin­a­tion, it is their abil­ity to fin­ish moves off, wheth­er it is thro­ugh Tom Clev­er­ley, Lu­is Nani, or An­tonio Va­lencia.” CFR Cluj Te­am: Mario Felgueir­as, Ivo Pinto, Ionut Rada, Laszlo Sepsi, Cadu, Ma­tias Aguir­regaray, Cam­ora, Gab­riel Mures­an, Ra­fael, Mod­ou Sougou, Pan­tel­is Ka­petanos. Sub­stitutes: Vasile Maftei, Fe­lice Pic­colo, Lu­is Al­berto, Viorel Nicoara, Dio­go Valente, Sasa Bjelan­ovic, Eduard Stan­cioiu. Man­chester Uni­ted Te­am: Da­vid De Gea, Ra­fael, Jon­athan Evans, Rio Fer­dinand, Pat­rice Ev­ra, Dar­ren Fletch­er, An­der­son, Tom Clev­er­ley, Way­ne Roo­ney, Chi­charito, Robin van Per­sie. Sub­stitutes: Scott Woot­ton, Al­ex­an­der Buttner, Shinji Ka­gawa, Nani, Nick Pow­ell, Dan­ny Wel­beck, An­ders Lindegaard.

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