Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Manchester United Own World Football

The world is restored to its foundations; the stars resume their ordered march.

Manchester United, recently named by Forbes magazine as the world's richest sporting team at $1.8 billion, are top of the English Premier League, coiled for a famous second-half run to Premiership and European glory.

The Liverpool faithful have been led astray by their Shepard, Rafael Benitez, who naively crippled his own club with outlandish and ill-timed statements in an attempt to cover up his captain's legal woes.

Arsenal are in another valley of their trademarked eternal cycle of growth and decline, while Chelsea's lack of true width leaves their attacks predictable with their own captain aging.

United, however, after a famous campaign in 2007-2008, which saw them crowned champions home and abroad, predicated by stout and youthful defense, and led forward by Fifa World Player of the Year Cristiano Ronaldo, are sitting pretty yet again.

Evoking the only cliche of the article, the season isn't won at the half-way point. And despite being through to the knockout stages of the Uefa Champions League, into the fourth round of the the FA Cup, finalists in the Carling Cup, and top of the Premier League, it is conceivable that it may go wrong.

That argument is ageless, and founded mainly on the rationalizing hopes of rivals, as no other club, really, would prefer to be in any other position than where Manchester United are right now.

Though, Manchester United supporters are often maligned for being shallow, assumedly for supporting the most dominant club in world football in the last 20 years because it is fashionable or easy.

It can be difficult to separate the bandwagoners from the bleeding Reds, and the latter are never immune to the stigma introduced by the former group.

However, there is surely great peace of mind in placing convictions in a club and supporting them with all your heart, to have that love reciprocated, in full, with competition, class, and glory, year after year.

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