Manchester United 1-0 Barcelona: Underrated Park covers for Ronaldo

Everyone expected it: Manchester United's startlingly effective right winger was instrumental to their defeat of Barcelona in Tuesday's European Cup game. After being criticized for is lack of end product in his initial games for the club, he has worked hard and made that a part of his game. He is an integral part of the team.

Except that the right winger everyone expected to sparkle was Cristiano Ronaldo. The one who actually did was lesser-sung South Korean Park Ji-sung.

On Park's signing from Holland's PSV Eindhoven, the move was cynically viewed by fans as an effort to sell shirts in Korea. Park's effort could not be questioned--Park has unquenchable reserves of bubbling energy--but he was, said one fan page, "Not good enough for Manchester United's side."

The fans were wrong.

On Wednesday, Park once again ran all 90 minutes. But there was also a quality about his performance and he was the only Manchester United player who produced consistent, threatening crosses, two extra-accurate efforts in particular dangerous for the home side.

Park is the opposite of Ronaldo in terms of style. The Portuguese is all flash and his end-product comes in the form of goals. Park is unglamorous and utilitarian--though he is an offensive player, he also provides the defense with the kind of herculean contribution Ronaldo doesn't bother to put in.

Park is also the best crosser his team has. And I think that's the product of his insatiable work-ethic. When Park gets the ball, he hits the byline and whips it in, with uncanny accuracy, to the head or foot of a teammate. He's singleminded, persistent. Winning teams need players like that.

And it's grossly unfair to say he was signed to shift shirts. I won't attempt to deny the possibility that his transfer increased the number of Red Devils shirts sold in Seoul.

But there's also something racist about those accusations, which are raised every time an Asian player moves to a European club. They never seem to be associated with players from outside Asia, even though I think they should be.

I would propose, for instance, that Manchester United only keep utility man John O'Shea around to maintain their following in Ireland. From what I have seen, O'Shea is by far the worst professional footballer they actually put on the field, clumsy and prone to losing his man, lacking in aggression.

But the club needs some reminder of the days when Roy Keane, the former Ireland captain, converted so many residents of the Emerald Isle to their cause.

These days, United's coach, Sir Alex Ferguson, is so loath to play O'Shea that he puts midfielders like Owen Hargreaves out of position at right-back to avoid putting the Irishman on the field. Park, by contrast, has started the two most important European games of the club's season so far, and performed well in both.

This season, Manchester United have not lost any game in which Park has played. The Korean is not spectacular, not necessarily a crowd-pleaser, but he is effective. His work-rate is inspirational to his teammates.

And in two games against Barcelona, Park has played well, while the club's more well-known, flashier players have not.

Especially Cristiano Ronaldo. It's good for his club that he has a reliable guy like Park to uphold the name of Manchester United right-wingers.

Derby 2-6 Arsenal: Earnshaw's exuberance exposes embarrassing inequality

You there was naked joy in Rob Earnshaw's face as he celebrated scoring for Derby County against Arsenal in today's English Premiership soccer match. He ran towards the crowd, front-flipping through the air before launching into a stiff-legged dance probably picked up from a Morris Day video.

His team was losing.

The eventual result was 2-6 in favor of visiting Arsenal, and it was pretty apparent which team had been at the bottom of the league table since day one and which had been in first place most of the season. And the London-based away team was even more dominant than the scoreline suggests.

The Premiership is the most lucrative, well-publicized league in the world, but it is also the most polarized. Every team is fantastically rich, but the four largest teams, of which Arsenal is one, make the rest look like serfs.

Admittedly, this year's vintage of Derby County is by far the worst team ever to play in this league. The disparity in talent between these two teams is such that Derby's ability to score even one goal, let alone two, is a shock.

Add to that the frustrating season Earnshaw has had and you can probably excuse his joy. Derby paid more to sign him than they ever have for any player and he has not justified the outlay.

The team's results have been so bad that the club learned it would be demoted to the second tier of English soccer in March, two months before the end of the season. They have only won one game this season. Their best players left for teams in the second tier midway through the season. They just aren't trying anymore.

But a league that includes a team of Arsenal's talent and one of Derby's cluelessness cannot be healthy.

The Londoners, known for playing attractive soccer, were allowed to be at their aesthetic best, despite starting with five reserve team players. They produced sweeping passing moves involving curled through balls, surging runs across half the field, deft back-heeled touches and inch-perfect thirty-yard high passes that Derby's defenders seemed disinclined to deal with.

It was a dizzying hurricane of skill that none of Derby's starting players seemed even remotely capable of withstanding, let alone reproducing. The goals included three for Togolese superstar Emmanuel Adebayor, who didn't even play in the first half, and one each for the raw teenager Theo Walcott, half-injured Robin van Persie, and Danish forward Nicklas Bendtner, who has endured a terrible season. Each was a mark of glaring shame on the home team, whose fans started leaving well before the final whistle.

It was all the more embarrassing because Arsenal's is not a great team. Derby even drew level in the first half, defender Jay McEveley pouncing on negligent Arsenal marking in the penalty area off a corner kick. But they didn't believe in themselves, just as they have not all season. They are depressingly mediocre and will not be missed--only American midfielder Benny Feilhaber, a second-half substitute, even seemed capable of passing the ball.

But the Premiership will see more teams whose players are so inadequate that they celebrate exuberantly even when they are losing. Unless something is done, but I don't know what that would be.


Earnshaw did this

Excuse me sir, there's a dick on my maturity: A review of "Forgetting Sarah Marshall."

"Forgetting Sarah Marshall" begins with a dick.

It's the main character's penis, awkwardly exposed to viewers and costars alike. The penis never really leaves, even if it is not on camera for most of the "Sarah Marshall's" 11o minutes.

Like the films of its producer, Judd Apatow ("Superbad," "Knocked Up"), then, it is a film whose emphasis is on the male libido. But what's notable about the presence of the penis is the near-complete absence of female nudity to balance it out.

This curious lack of female objectification illustrates a novel and refreshing aspect of "Sarah Marshall," written by its star, Jason Segel, and directed by Nicholas Stoller: It has three-dimensional, likable, understandable female characters.

That's an even greater achievement when you consider that this is a bitter, seemingly semi-autobiographical breakup comedy. It concerns the attempts of Segel's Peter Bretter to get over the titular Sarah (Kristin Bell), the star of a television series for which he writes music. These take him to Hawai'i, ironically to the resort where she, unbeknownst to him, is also staying with her new boyfriend (Russell Brand).

But Sarah and Mila Kunis' Rachel, the hotel employee who becomes Peter's new love interest, are not the idealized sex objects of Apatow's films. They have histories, anxieties, and understandable motivations. Both hold their own in terms of humor as well.

"Sarah Marshall" manages to somehow create a film-world in which we don't have to dislike characters. It does this by using the very element that makes it comic--crossed wires.

As in Apatow's films, the laughs here are produced when characters react to their environment in ways neither the audience nor their costars expect. Here, that is the source of the complications--the characters don't understand one another well enough to avoid offending one another. The fact that the way they do this is often comical is what creates "Sarah Marshall's" success.

Of course, there is also the penis. The humor here is often lowbrow and sexual. In fact, the sex-based comedy of "Sarah Marshall" is well beyond Apatow's efforts in terms of graphicness and frankness, especially when Brand's Aldous Snow is involved.

But unlike Apatow's films, sex is merely one of the film-making tools, rather than the focus of the entire film. For Apatow, maturity is something people attain as a side-effect of the pursuit of the ideal sex life. Here, maturity is the destination and sex is merely an important, prevalent part of the journey.

And so, oddly, the sexual ribaldry is the disguise maturity and realism are wrapped in to fool viewers. That is the real secret to "Sarah Marshall's" success.

That and dicks.



His dick is in this movie.

Obama turns self-serving allusion into crystalizing moment

Midway through his speech at McArthur Court, Barack Obama was describing the speech with which he announced his candidacy for president, saying, "and as I stood there, on the steps of the Illinois State House--the same place where Abraham Lincoln announced his candidacy--"

He was cut off by the loud, manly cheers of a solitary wag in the second tier of the arena, which brought from the crowd some mild, polite laughter and left the Democratic contender briefly bewildered. But his confusion lasted only a split second before he his face curled into a wry smile and he turned to face the man.

"Yes," he chuckled, "yes, that's right. Let's hear it for Abraham Lincoln."

That got the loudest cheer of the night and the widest smile from the Illinois senator.

Obama's address was precisely an hour long, lasting from 9:06 to 10:06, and it did not, by one second, outstay its welcome. With almost mathematical precision it covered every inch of the Obama platform, never for a second spilling over the edge. There was nuance to it--Obama did not point out a similarity (they're both from Illinois!) to the most respected man in American history by mistake--but overall, it was more Brutus than Marc Anthony, a summary of the stances Obama holds rather than an attempt to get anyone in the audience to take them up. Judging by the response he got from an overwhelmingly sympathetic crowd, that would have been a waste of time.

Nobody ought to have been impressed by the candidate's rhetoric because it was essentially the same information probably available at his website, in his pamphlets and, most importantly, likely identical to the speeches he'd given in Salem and Portland earlier in the day.

What were impressive were the moments when he put down the obligatory load of the speech briefly and juggled the slippery balls thrown at him by the audience. These instances were infrequent, and he wisely elected to dodge the promptings of the rambling woman seated behind him in the second tier, but they showed a man of quick reactions, wit, and realism.

For instance, when "I love you" hurdled loudly in his direction from several angles, he merely nodded and flippantly replied, "Yes, yes, I love you too," using the same tone of voice one applies to an overeager dog, measured but patronizing, and above all ironical. Is it any wonder that this man is the candidate of choice among younger voters? You would never expect Hillary Clinton or John McCain to indulge in sarcasm.

My father, back when he was a curmudgeonly Obama skeptic rather than a dogmatic Obama supporter, expressed wariness at this facet of the candidate's personality. He said, "I'm scared that MTV is deciding the presidency." There's reason in this, since George Bush was elected largely because, between him and Al Gore or John Kerry, most people in 2000 or 2004 knew who they'd rather share a round of beers with.

But there's also sense in picking a candidate self-aware enough to generate charisma. One of my professors called this the "Broken Windows Theory"--if the windows are broken, you wonder what else is missing. The evidence from Mac Court suggests that, with Barack Obama, the answer is not too much.

-Eleanor

This is the third in a series of articles about Barack Obama's recent visit to Eugene.