DAVID MOYES revealed he persuaded Phil Jagielka to take the decisive penalty that swept Everton into their first FA Cup final for 14 years yesterday and shattered Manchester United’s ambitions of winning an unprecedented quintuple at Wembley.
The England international emerged the reluctant hero of Everton’s passage to a final with Chelsea on May 30th, having harboured reservations over taking part in a dramatic penalty shoot-out following his ordeal in the Uefa Cup last season.
Everton exited against Fiorentina as a consequence of Jagielka’s penalty miss in a shoot-out at Goodison Park. However, after Dimitar Berbatov and Rio Ferdinand had their spot-kicks saved by the former United goalkeeper Tim Howard at Wembley, the defender beat Ben Foster and a side weakened by Alex Ferguson, the manager admitted, as a direct result of the Wembley pitch.
“I don’t think Phil was entirely keen on taking one, but he had scored in training this week and that stuck in my mind,” Moyes said. “I asked who wanted one and there were a few heads nodding. I looked at him and said, ‘You all right for one Jags?’ I think if he’d got his way he might not have taken one, but I didn’t have too many takers on the day.
“James Vaughan went up and he’s not played for four months, and Jags missed his last one against Fiorentina. There weren’t many to pick from to be honest and then when Tim [Cahill] missed the first against United, who are probably the world’s best at shoot-outs because they have done it so many times . . . you fear the worst. But good on our goalkeeper, he made two excellent saves. It took great courage for James to go up - and Jags after what happened to him in the Uefa Cup last year.”
Jagielka was also the key figure in an otherwise drab semi-final’s major talking point, when he tripped the United forward Danny Welbeck inside the penalty area only for the referee Mike Riley, whose appointment Moyes had questioned before kick-off, to wave play on. “I did touch him,” the Everton defender admitted. “I don’t know how much that contributed to him going down. Maybe I got lucky, but we’ll take that luck.”
Moyes had asked the Football Association to review Riley’s appointment last week, alluding to an alleged leniency on the part of the referee towards United. Ferguson admitted Moyes’s “mind game” might have influenced Riley’s decision, but insisted he had no regrets over resting several players for an FA Cup semi-final.
Ferguson, who insisted Wayne Rooney should recover from an ankle injury in time to face Portsmouth at Old Trafford on Wednesday, argued: “It might have had an effect. You can’t be certain, but all that nonsense about him being a Manchester United supporter is just ridiculous stuff. Someone put that in David’s head at a press conference. You never know if it influenced him. He’s got to be 100 per cent certain to give a penalty in a big game like this. If he sees it again he’ll know he’s made a mistake but why would the lad [Welbeck] go down when he’s gone around the goalkeeper and left him stranded? It was a clear penalty.”
The United manager left Cristiano Ronaldo, Edwin van der Sar and Michael Carrick out of his squad and revealed he would have started with Berbatov, Paul Scholes and possibly Patrice Evra, who were substitutes, had it not been for the state of the pitch. “When I saw the pitch in the semi-final yesterday I decided I didn’t want to go to extra time with my strongest squad.”
GuardianService
