yeah but oh well, we still won 
Ronma pulled off a similar trick against Milan before if i didnt
remember wrongly but their goal was disallowed too.
Poor Ronaldo, 2 legitimate goals disallowed XD
It is not the easiest thing in the world to feel sorry for a
23-year-old footballer who can walk away from a wrecked £200,000
Ferrari without a backward glance or even a slight ache in the
wallet, but Cristiano Ronaldo
deserved a measure of sympathy last night as, having played his
part in a fine victory for Manchester
United, he was deprived of two goals of his own to add to the
three scored by his team-mates.
Ronaldo will travel to Zurich tonight expecting to pick up
Fifa's world player of the year award, a reward for his belief that
football should be a matter of skill and spontaneity. Last night,
watched by a crowd including Fabio Capello and Jose Mourinho, the
winger irradiated a vital match with a spirit of invention that
would have done credit to any of football's famous free
spirits.
Leaving blue-shirted defenders lying in the gutter like so many
smashed-up supercars, he carried a constant promise of danger and
had a hand in Manchester United's second and third goals, scored by
Wayne Rooney and Dimitar Berbatov. The two disallowed efforts,
however, provided equally vivid memories.
The first came a minute into first-half stoppage time, when
Rooney and Ryan Giggs played a wonderful trick on their opponents.
United had won a right-wing corner and Rooney dribbled the dead
ball gently towards the corner flag. He stopped it in the quadrant,
as the laws require, and then dragged it back no more than 18
inches with the sole of his boot before strolling away, as if to
leave it for Ryan Giggs, the normal taker of such kicks. The Welsh
veteran walked up to the ball, turned towards the goal and suddenly
set off on a short dribble before hitting a cross which Ronaldo
raced to meet at the near post with a powerful header that arrowed
past the dumbfounded Petr Cech.
Unfortunately the linesman was not thinking at the same speed as
the United players and the goal was disallowed, against the
vehement protests of those who had engineered such a marvellous
piece of training-ground trickery. The United trio were thus denied
the rewards of the most impudent dead-ball routine since Willie
Carr of Coventry City flicked a free-kick up with the ball between
his heels for Ernie Hunt to volley home against Everton almost 40
years ago.
Ronaldo was denied again towards the end of the second half,
when Berbatov met Rooney's astute flick from the right and steered
the ball into his Portuguese team-mate's path. Level with the last
defender when the pass was played, Ronaldo beat the goalkeeper from
close range with the perfect one-on-one finish, only to fall victim
once again to a linesman whose perception, as the replay showed,
was not the equal of the players' execution of a sumptuous
move.
He had plenty with which to console himself. His evening started
with a kick on his shins from Frank Lampard in the third minute,
bringing a booking for the Chelsea man as
well as giving a broad hint of the uncompromising nature of the
visitors' challenge. But the backheels, the stutter-step dribbles
and the weirdly swerving free-kicks took a while to ignite and he
earned a yellow card of his own when he and his compatriot Ricardo
Carvalho wrestled each other to the ground on the half-hour.
Once United had scored from the retaken corner on the brink of
half-time, however, Ronaldo's contribution came into focus. Now
facing a visiting midfield reduced in numbers by the withdrawal of
Deco, he exploited the additional space to devastating effect,
moving across to the left flank and torturing Jose Bosingwa,
another fellow Portuguese, while demonstrating his gift for
delivering lethal crosses without the split-second pause that mere
mortals need to gather and steady themselves before striking the
ball.
It was with a backheel like a switchblade thrust in a dark alley
that he took Bosingwa out of the game and invited the enterprising
Patrice Evra to deliver the cross from which Rooney stabbed home
United's second goal. And three minutes from time, having been
brought down by Bosingwa's replacement, Juliano Belletti, on the
left of the Chelsea penalty area, Ronaldo got up to drive in a low
free-kick which the sprinting Berbatov met with a firm shot to
complete the scoreline.
Ronaldo was not alone, however, in his excellence and his
influence on what felt like a gala evening. During a first half of
unremitting effort but not much coherence from either side, the
33-year-old Giggs put on a command performance in central
midfield.
Twice the great man drove into the heart of Chelsea's defence,
injecting pace and dynamism to lift United's spirits and standards.
At the other end of the age spectrum, the tall and slender central
defender Jonny Evans, who turned 21 last week, performed alongside
Vidic with a composure and a lucidity that would have done credit
to the absent Rio Ferdinand.
For these and other reasons Sir Alex Ferguson could leave the
ground wearing his biggest smile of the season. The chase is
on.
