the other thing i love

man, football is so… i don’t even know how to explain it.  it makes a person devote so much time energy and money to something which they do not even physically get involved in.  if i take into account the number of shirts and subscrīptions fees, and the flight which i paid for to go to old trafford next week, i think i could almost buy a second car.

no matter what, win or lose you stay by them… however the losses are always remembered and harder to recover from. it’s like a really bad restaurant you went to or a relationship hat went sour. though this relationship only goes one way.  you get angry at them, you yell at them and yet they don’t react to you.  they can’t freaking hear you.

but when something like rafael da silva happens, you want to do more than to just yell at the tv.  you feel compelled to yell at him in person, which i am sure tomorrow morning those people will make themselves known to him.

i guess you can be mature for you age but as a player you cannot be too mature beyond your years.  sure you can seem like you play and have the vision of a much older player, but the instinct to pass or shoot, and whether to foul or not is not there.  i can’t say paul scholes has learned the last item yet and he’s 35. rafael will bounce back as do all footballers.  david beckham let a whole nation down when he got sent off against argentina in the worldcup.  not as big a stage, but it’s not far away.

an just like rafael, man united will bounce back.  but tonight, as they hit the showers, and as we all go home, we will have to go with the knowledge that it was petulance that lost us the game and not a superior opponent.

did we deserve to win the game? no. noone ever deserves to win the game, but we definitely should have won it.  even a man down, we had chanced to take it.  but after the card, we pretty much were back peddling the whole way.

we’ll wake up the next day and talk about the game at work and online with our friends. there’ll be thousands like me online writing about  how much it sucked, how vandersar was so close to saving both goals (maybe) and of course rafael. but yet in the same breath we will continue to support our team.  help them bounce back. and never for one moment turn our back on them.  cause this is united and we never give up until the final whistle.

here’s hoping for a better end to our season.