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July 26, 2012

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Home » Sports » Soccer

Kagawa grabs United winner

Program Code: 0909346130605007

manchester United's new signing Shinji Kagawa of Japan scored his first - and the lone goal of the match - for the Reds during a preseason friendly against a second-string Shanghai Shenhua side yesterday.

Shenhua's star duo Nicolas Anelka and Didier Drogba watched the game from the stands.

Kagawa was in the starting lineup with Rio Ferdinand, Antonio Valencia, Anderson and Michael Carrick while Shenhua coach Sergio Batista rested his first team players, instead giving the bench players a chance to impress.

Shenhua's Australian striker Joel Griffiths was back in the lineup after missing out on couple of games due to injury. Griffiths missed a great one-on-one chance with United goalkeeper Anders Lindegaard early in the first half as a determined Shenhua held the English Premier League side to a goalless draw at the break.

The only goal came in the 68th minute when Kagawa found the net after some good work by Bebe inside the box.

Batista was happy with final result who rested his first team for the big Chinese Super League match against leader and defending champion Guangzhou Evergrande on Saturday.

"It was an exciting game. I think the fans should be happy," he said. "Although it is a commercial game we took it seriously. We played against a world class team with many talents. Except for the result, I am satisfied with my players. We played well in the first half and we had an opportunity to score a goal. In the second half we changed some players and we made some changes in our tactic. The game gave us some good experience."




 

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