Nemanja Vidic turned in a Man-of-the-Match display at Wembley
and scored in the penalty shoot-out, but that is of little
consolation to the Serbian as the Reds crashed out of the FA
Cup.
“We’re disappointed because this is a trophy we wanted to win,”
he told MUTV. “We played some good football
and created chances, but in the end it came to penalties – and
that’s just a lottery. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. In
the Champions League final we won… but today we didn’t score our
penalties. You have to congratulate Everton.”
Vidic dispatched his spot-kick with aplomb, even though it
wasn’t enough to prevent a 4-2 shoot-out loss, but he says dealing
with the pressure of converting from 12 yards is “nothing new”.
“I practise in training and I also took penalties for Red Star
Belgrade and Spartak Moscow,” he said. “It’s nothing new, but
there’s always the possibility you’ll miss, especially in games
where there is pressure. I scored, but it’s not about me scoring.
The team didn’t win. We need to forget this game now.
“We must take it and recover for the next game. It’s going to be
hard, but we have Wednesday’s match against Portsmouth and we need
to be focused. It helps that some players were rested. They are
going to be fresh and I hope we have a good game at Old
Trafford.”
Vidic was proud of the performances of four teenagers in
United’s youth-inflected starting line-up. And he says it’s the
result, rather than the performance, which was frustrating. “We
played well, so we don’t need to be disappointed about that,” he
added. “We played offensively and tried to score. We had young
players in our team, they showed some quality. We know they are
capable of doing that. We just didn’t take our chances.”