Manchester United Asia Tour

Friday: Manu's Training

After my last class have ended at 12.30pm, Wai Hoe and I met up with Saveen who was so excited and jumping about like a kid singing "Glory Glory Man United!", sharing his joy with everyone he walked past in college that he was about to meet his favourite team.

Went to Wai Hoe's house to chill out for a while.. Had lunch with Sheng Feng who lives near Wai Hoe's house. Then headed to Titiwangsa train station at 2pm. As we were sitting in the train, we were observing the people around us as we were pretty sure that a lot of MU fans will be going to the Bukit Jalil stadium at this time as well. We noticed a few guys with Manu jersey on and girls pulling their passes from their handbags but did not see many people with red jerseys as anticipated.

At at 2.30pm, we reached Bukit Jalil station. Upon exiting the train, we saw a swarm of reds coming out not only from our carriage of train, but the others as well. The crowded train suddenly became empty. And we thought we were the early ones.

We quickly went into the stadium and reserved many places for the rest that were yet to come. Although we were there like 2 hours early which managed to get us good seats, waiting there for 2 hours was like waiting for few minutes because of the excitement buried in our hearts to finally get to see the Manu players for real.

Note:
Quality of pictures of some are not so good as they are cropped out to ensure that readers can see the players better rather than tiny dots in the picture. Although the pictures are not top notch but the quality are still bearable. Sorry for the bad quality as I do not have big ass lens which will cost me a bum to shoot spectacular sports photos.

It's only the training and its this packed already.

While waiting, cam whoring helped to make time past faster..

Initially we thought that Malaysia team was going to train after Manu have trained. Apparently not, as Malaysia team came out earlier. Probably, this was to avoid people for not watching them train after Manu have finished training. How smart.. Well, we were pretty impressed with what our national team could do.

After the Malaysian team have finished their exhibition training session, the crowd waits patiently for the red devils to make their grand entrance.

The first player that entered the field was Paul Scholes. He started kicking the ball which triggered audience to go wild!

We Malaysians gave them a warm welcome by doing a Mexican Wave..

Pretty impressive to see M'sians really work together so well for the first time.. Well, for Manu.. anything is Bole!

They started off their training session by jogging around the field,

Followed by their stretching exercises,

After that, they played one touch. It is a game where a circle is formed by players and two players will be in the centre, the players forming the circle can only pass to each other with only one touch while the two players in the centre of the circle will try to intercept the pass. It's a training of speed and anticipation. No pictures of this as players will training quite far away from where we were sitting. No point taking pictures of them as it would be impossible to see.

Later, they were divided to 2 separate groups to play a mini soccer game. It was amazing to watch them displaying their impeccable skills of maneuvering the ball. The difference of skills between Manu players and Malaysian players could be seen clearly. Though the training only lasted for an hour but it was an exhilarating experience.

Although Manu had won our hearts but it caused us to loose our voices..

Saturday : D - Day

left the house at 2pm... Went wif Dad and a friend, Choong. Did not bring my camera because I wanted to fully concentrate on the match and taking good pictures of the players was clearly impossible for me.

Reached there around 2.30pm. The lines outside the stadium are long as expected. The whole place was flooded with reds which shows how much M'sians support our national football team.

However, me being such a good and patriotic M'sian citizen definitely will choose to support our national team Malaysia larr! This was what I wore to the match to show my support.

We managed to get good seats which were the 3rd row from the front. However, being so near to the field caused us to sacrifice our shelter from the sun. We were sweating like dogs while waiting for nearly 2 hours.

Waiting for the game was quite entertaining, because we were observing our surroundings a lot. People entering the stadium were mostly wearing Manu jersey. However there were some who decided to be funny by wearing a liverpool and chelsea jersey to the match which resulted in getting a loud BOO from the crowd.

I was also reading a lot of the signs brought by the hardcore Manu fans. There were signs like:

Evra > Cristiano Ronaldo

How's the Nasi Lemak Fergie?

Tevez? Cristiano who? It's Manchester United!

Harimau Malaysia

Take me home Rio!
(sign held by a guy.. how gay)

The match was pretty intense as the Malaysian team gave quite a fight. We, the M'sian crowd were like freaking hypocrites. We were cheering for both teams.. but more for Manu of course.

Everyone was pretty excited to watch Michael Owen playing as a Manu player. Although he was given free to Manu but he proved himself worthy by scoring a goal few minutes before the final whistle was blown giving Manu a slender victory.

Final score:


Manu (3) - Malaysia (2)

Kudos to the Malaysian players who played hard to give Manu players a good fight and also entertaining us well!