Manchester United 2 Inter Milan 3

A record crowd for a pre-season friendly match at Old Trafford saw Manchester United suffer their first defeat of the summer campaign in a highly entertaining encounter. Following the below par standard of the opponents in the 4 games on United’s Far East tour, Inter Milan offered much sterner opposition. The Italians exposed alarming frailties in the Manchester United defense with some swift counter-attacking play from Luis Figo and Zlatan Ibrahimovic.

Wayne Rooney opened the scoring on 17 minutes with a cool finish from a Patrice Evra cross. The remainder of the first half was all Inter, the Serie A champions scored 3 goals in 14 minutes in a blistering spell where the Manchester United midfield was overrun and central defenders Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic looked highly vulnerable. Several instances of sloppy play from Evra did not help the cause either, if he carries on with performances like this Gabriel Heinze may well get his place at left back.

With the big name summer signings Hargreaves, Nani and Anderson all watching from the stands with the injured Paul Scholes, this was in no way Manchester United’s strongest team and it’s better to get the defensive mistakes out of the way before the season proper gets underway. The players stepped it up after the break and United looked much better in the second half showing some fantastic flowing football on the break reminiscent of last season.