By Neil Humphreys
Straits Times
THERE was a time when Manchester United were about as popular as a kiss-o-gram at a children's party.
The arrogance, the vein-bulging haranguing of referees and the occasional flying kick made the Red Devils the team everyone loved to hate.
It was always going to take considerable effort for a team to snatch that mantle.
In the end, it took a Russian oligarch, a billion-dollar squad that play with less adventure than a Sunday morning pub side and Didier 'I've just been shot' Drogba.
Now, throw John Terry into the mix and you have a club that only Peter Kenyon could love.
The first leg of the Champions League semi-final between Liverpool and Chelsea yesterday morning was simply heartbreaking.
Only Chelsea fans would've failed to have any sympathy for John Arne Riise after his bizarre stoppage- time goal handed the Blues an undeserved lifeline in the 94th minute.
And why were there four minutes of stoppage time anyway? The referee, Konrad Plautz, never stopped for anything. Had Terry pulled Fernando Torres' shorts off and thrown them at Plautz, the referee would've played on.
When Terry was finally shown a yellow card in the dying moments, after he had cynically sent a rampaging Javier Mascherano airborne, the referee received a sarcastic standing ovation.
The Blues were fingernails- down-the-blackboard irritating at Anfield, particularly when their polarising centre-forward was anywhere near the ball.
Drogba is 1.89m tall and around 90kg of solid muscle, but he goes down like Bambi on ice.
There were at least six occasions when he went down after what appeared to be innocuous challenges. I'm sure he collapsed when an Anfield steward handed him the ball for a throw-in.
The striker even has a full repertoire of falls. There's the common 'tree felling', suggesting he's been chopped down abruptly. Sometimes, he goes for The Matrix 'I'd-better-go-down-really-slowly-so-the-ref-spots-it' tumble.
And in the second half, following a minor challenge from Riise, he opted for his preferred Platoon poster fall.
For those not familiar with the movie's iconic poster image of actor Willem Dafoe, Drogba acts like he's been shot from behind, his upper body juts out violently and he throws his arms above his head before sinking to the turf in despair.
You're never quite sure if Drogba is waiting for the referee to blow his whistle or for Oliver Stone to shout, 'cut!'.
The irony is of course that if one player had a right to go down like he was being machine-gunned a la James Caan in The Godfather (another Drogba favourite), it was Torres.
Chelsea's strategy, apart from containing Liverpool by playing as little football as possible, was to target Torres. The policy was exceedingly simple: If Torres is standing up, he can score; ergo, don't let him stand up.
Terry was always happy to oblige.
The Chelsea skipper likes to park his Bentley in parking spaces reserved for the disabled outside Pizza Express, so subtlety isn't his forte.
But his decision to run over a prostrate Torres and knee him in the back made the pizza incident look tactful.
A few minutes later, Ricardo Carvalho elbowed the Spaniard in the same spot, presumably while singing, 'Anything you can do, I can do better'.
Meanwhile, Drogba, fearing that Terry or Carvalho might upstage him, managed to pull Jamie Carragher's shirt in the box, fall over and then demand a penalty.
When the free kick went against him, Drogba shrugged his shoulders at the referee as if to say, 'Who, me?'
At that moment, he became that nauseating kid in class who'd stick a pin on your chair and then feign innocence when the teacher told you off for screaming.
The outraged Anfield crowd sang 'same old Chelsea, always cheating', which was rather harsh.
The old Chelsea didn't really cheat.
(it was after midnight here) but Barca were all over Man U like a bad suit in the first half. The lack of chances surprised me, but what was even more surprising was to see Wayne Rooney playing in defense. What a gameplan!
