Red Tide

Passionate Red Devils

Picture taken from http://www.thestar.com.my/

Wow! Who would have thought (or predicted) our Malaysian boys scoring two goals against the men from the red half of Manchester?
That was what happened; and Mohd. Amri Yahyah would be forgiven if he was still on cloud nine since last Saturday evening. To score against not one but two top class Premiership goalkeepers in one match does not happen often, to say the least. A dipping volley from yards out to leave Edwin van Der Sar stranded and punishing Ben Foster for his mistake were not part of the script but this has been a classic example of not being overawed by the opposition.

A great match for our 'young tigers' and I believe MU supporters watching the match on telly would be heartened by our fellow Malaysians' display and felt fuzzy at the sight of the ‘Red Tide’ blanketing the stadium. The match had started at 5.30pm Malaysian time and caught quite a number of football fans by surprise, yours truly included. If not for my mother’s phone calls to inform me of the time (yes, she’s also a passionate fan), I would have slept through the evening and would have waited for the match to start at the usual 8.45pm kick-off time for live Malaysian football matches.

So, Michael Owen had a warm reception when he came on as a second half substitute. I’m sure the ladies (and many guys?) had almost screamed their lungs out when he was introduced into the match. There is no Stretford End or Kop End in Bukit Jalil but I believe as soon as Owen scored in the last 5 minutes of the match, the end at the back of the goal unofficially became ‘Owen’s End’; well, at least momentarily. To be honest, I was happy to see him scoring his first goal in a United shirt despite my earlier thoughts on Owen. Hopefully, this is the start of many great things to come United and Owen, in particular, but as they say, these are still early days.
Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

p/s: It seems that Indonesia’s loss is Malaysia’s gain. With the cancelation of the Indonesian tour, Malaysian fans were given an added bonus when United played the Malaysian side again in the space of 3 days on Monday night. This time, United comfortably won 2-0, thanks to goals from Federico Macheda and Michael Owen (again!).