In the fifteen years or so that I have been following the beautiful game, I cannot recall a single player who has been tailor-made for the big occasion quite like Park Ji-Sung. The South Korean midfielder is an anomaly, an enigma, and a one-off at Manchester United. In a bog-standard Premier League match, against the likes of Blackburn Rovers or Fulham, Park is not necessarily guaranteed to be involved in the starting line-up or even be on the bench, regardless of his fitness. Yet when it comes to the biggest matches of the season, the 30-year-old is always one of the first names on the team sheet.
An incredible work ethic and tactical awareness are the strengths of Park’s game, not to mention his incredible stamina, and while he is by no means a natural goalscorer, he has a knack of grabbing goals in the biggest of games, as Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool could all testify. While the more skilful and maverick-like Nani has won United’s player’s player of the year award this season, it is likely that in Saturday’s Champions League final the Portuguese will find himself amongst the substitutes. Antonio Valencia has returned from a broken leg and hit the ground running in the last few weeks of the season, seemingly making the right-wing berth his own. While Nani can also play on the left, he is not as effective there and there is almost definitely no shifting the South Korean for an occasion such as Saturday.
What Park gives that Nani can’t is the defensive cover for Patrice Evra (his best friend at the club) that the Frenchman is almost certain to need, given that Pedro, Dani Alves and Lionel Messi will all be working the right flank for Barcelona. His willingness to track back is one thing but his attacking prowess can be seriously undervalued. The former South Korea captain (he retired from the national team after the Asian Cup in January which saw him miss a large chunk of United’s Premier League campaign) has displayed an array of different goals in his time at United, including a diving header against Liverpool last season, a mazy last-minute run and powerful finish against Wolves this season and some precise shooting like against Chelsea in the Champions League quarter-final second leg.
But it is only in the last couple of seasons that Park has truly been appreciated for what he brings to Sir Alex Ferguson’s team. It has been six years since he first signed from PSV Eindhoven for what now seems a very cheap £4million. He had moved to Holland in 2003 to join his former national team coach Guus Hiddink, with whom he had burst onto the world scene as a vibrant 21-year-old in the South Korea team that made the World Cup semi-finals on home soil. A fan’s favourite at the Philips Stadion, it took him a while to settle at Old Trafford (an early joke was that his first touch was so bad, his second touch would be a sliding tackle) but these days a game does not go by without the Stretford End singing his name. Apart from his first season he has never made more than 40 appearances in all competitions, partially due to injury and international duty, but he is now undoubtedly a key member of the United squad. If the Red Devils are to overcome Pep Guardiola’s mighty Barcelona team at Wembley this weekend, then the boy from Seoul is bound to be central to their success.
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