Well that ended up being far too easy. We were expecting Manchester United to cruise to the Champions League finals after a 2-0 win the first leg of their semifinal against Schalke, and it was patently obvious to all that they were a far better team, but even Sir Alex Ferguson must have been a little surprised that a team essentially made up of reserves managed a 4-1 demolition of a Champions League semifinalists. Yes, Schalke are tenth in the Bundesliga and came very close to being thrashed by Valencia in the second round before meeting an Inter Milan side bent on imploding in the most amusing possible way, but this is still the semis of the most prestigious competition in club football - and no team had ever lost by a five-goal aggregate margin at this stage until the Germans managed it.
Manchester United Vs. Schalke 04, Final Score: 4-1 Win At Old Trafford Gives Manchester United Place In Final
Things started well for United in the second leg, with Antonio Valenica latching onto an excellent pass by Darron Gibson to slide past Manchester United arch-nemesis Manuel Neuer, and things got even better when Gibson doubled their lead a few minutes later, firing a shot off the goalkeeper and the post before finding the back of the net. The parade was briefly interrupted when Jose Jurado executed a similar (but much cleaner goal), but 4-1 wasn't all that much worse than 4-0 for the hosts and there was still a whole second half to go.
That second half saw Anderson, who’s now played 128 games for his club, double his goal total with a quick brace. The lunacy inherent in a midfielder with a goalscoring record of one in every sixty three matches getting two in four minutes echoed amusingly around Twitter, and I think from that point forward people were mostly watching to see whether Anderson could get an implausbile hattrack.
Sure, there was other stuff going on - Klass-Jan Huntelar had a goal disallowed for offside and so did Chris Smalling (the defender nearly missed the two-yard tap-in, too), and in perhaps more important news Patrice Evra spent much of the half limping around with a possible hamstring issue, but the game and tie were over. Some fans actually left Old Trafford before the final whistle, too. Is reaching the Champions League final three times in four years really that boring?
United will be playing against FC Barcelona at Wembley on May 28th.
