FOOTBALL IS A GAME OF OPINIONS, SO it is only to be expected that announcements of man-of-the-match awards routinely lead to raised eyebrows and puzzled glances. Sky Sports, though, managed to get it wrong on Saturday evening, despite allocating the champagne to a player who had scored two goals and effectively won the match for his team. Who says so? Ruud van Nistelrooy, the man who was asked to present the bubbly to his team-mate, Cristiano Ronaldo.
True, it had not been a vintage performance by the Portugal winger, despite his two goals, but that was not a factor in Van Nistelrooy’s reasoning. Rather, the Manchester United and Holland forward had been overawed by the dedication of Lomana LuaLua in the most trying circumstances imaginable.
LuaLua’s 18-month-old son died of a mystery illness last month, but he was denied knowledge of it for two weeks by Democratic Republic of Congo officials in case it distracted him during the African Cup of Nations.
“There was only one man of the match for me and that was LuaLua,” Van Nistelrooy said. “I have never seen anything like it. What he did was show speed, technique, great strength in holding up the ball. He was a threat to us, to all our defenders and kept going for 90 minutes. I just went over to him after the game and said, ‘I wish you all the strength you need in this difficult time. How you pulled off a performance like that I just don’t know.’ ”
LuaLua’s display was in vain. Although Portsmouth had beaten United on both their previous visits to Fratton Park in the Premiership, it was with a more committed and cohesive set of players than the group hastily reshaped by Harry Redknapp in the recent transfer window.
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In the circumstances, they might have been advised to keep things tighter, especially in the early stages, and to unsettle their opponents by doing unto United what they have done themselves when confronted by technically superior Arsenal and Chelsea teams. Instead, Portsmouth played too open a game and left too much space between the back four and the midfield, into which Ryan Giggs, Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney gratefully poured.
After 18 minutes, Giggs’s run and shot against the bar allowed Van Nistelrooy to nod in United’s first and the ball dropped into the same gap in front of the Portsmouth defence 20 minutes later for Ronaldo to hit a vicious second. The game was effectively over at that point, but Ronaldo’s second goal, a low shot deflected past Dean Kiely by Andy O’Brien, made sure.
Giggs and Van Nistelrooy apart, United had barely broken sweat in the first half and they were even less energetic in the second. That and Redknapp’s plea to his players to “give it a go” enabled Portsmouth belatedly to summon up some of the spirit that was a given during home games in Redknapp’s first spell as manager, but Matt Taylor’s header with three minutes left came far too late to spur a comeback.
It could be argued that a match against United, despite their recent history, was not a true yardstick against which to judge Portsmouth’s chances of staying in the Premiership, but the same would have been said about Middlesbrough’s match at home to Chelsea. In fact, it was United who took any inspiration going from the result earlier in the day at the Riverside Stadium, even though the home team’s need for points had suddenly become more urgent.
“We have not given up hope of catching Chelsea, we have not given up and that will not change,” Van Nistelrooy said. “Now we have got to continue playing as we did in the first half and just see what happens. Chelsea will have to collapse, but we just have to focus on collecting three points as often as we can.”
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Any Chelsea collapse may not happen for a while yet, however. Their next game is at home to Portsmouth.