All Square at the Bernabeu

Real Madrid had to settle for a 1-1 draw in the 1st leg of their Round of 16 clash against Manchester United in the UEFA Champions League. Sir Alex Ferguson fielded a surprisingly attacking XI with Robin van Persie, Wayne Rooney & Danny Welbeck all getting a start along with Japanese international Shinji Kagawa. Phil Jones after his stellar display in containing Marouane Fellaini on Sunday partnered Michael Carrick in midfield.Rio Ferdinand & Jonny Evans made up the central defensive pairing. Jose Mourinho went with French youngster Raphael Varane in central defence along with Sergio Ramos and started his trusted midfield trio of Mesut Ozil, Xabi Alonso & Sami Khedira. Karim Benzema started up top flanked by Cristiano Ronaldo & Angel di Maria.

Off an early opening, Fabio Coentrao signaled an early warning as his right footed shot struck the upright and rebounded safely away from goal. United soaked up the pressure and on 20 minutes took the lead through Danny Welbeck as he connected off Wayne Rooney's corner to head past Diego Lopez in goal. Welbeck had an impressive all round game for the visitors, running at defenders playing off van Persie, pressing when not in posession and as well as chasing back to defend. Madrid equalized 10 minutes later when Cristiano Ronaldo rose magnificently, hanging in the air, to head in an Angel di Maria cross. Both sides fashioned more openings in the half; Welbeck went close to grabbing a second for United flicking a van Persie cross goalwards only for Real keeperLopez to tip it behind while Di Maria & Ronaldo both went close with a couple of sizzling long range drives. Playing in front of a packed Santiago Bernabeu, the home team started like a house on fire playing at a very high tempo and taking the game to United early. 

United managed to wrest some amount of control in midfield in the 2nd half, but Madrid continued to pepper the Red Devils' goal with Khedira, Ronaldo, Di Maria & Gonzalo Higuain all bringing out a save from David De Gea. Spaniard De Gea was outstanding for Sir Alex's team pulling off a string of saves to keep United in the game, one of them an acrobatic clearance off the line with his right leg to stop a Coentrao effort. On the break, United fashioned some sporadic openings. On 73 minutes, RvP latching onto a through ball from Rooney broke into the box and struck a powerful right footed shot that cannoned off the crossbar much to the Madrid supporters' relief. Seconds later, van Persie received an aerial ball over the defence from Jones, but fluffed his finish from 10 yards out allowing Xabi Alonso to make the clearance. 

 The draw means that United have a valuable away goal and go home to Old Trafford level on aggregate. Madrid meanwhile will have to score and try and make the game as high scoring as possible. "It's very special to play against them, I have a lot of respect for them", mentioned Ronaldo in his post match interview adding, "They are a very strong team defensively. We played better and deserved to score more goals". Sir Alex Fergusonpraised the effort put in by his players while acknowledging the value of a draw, "It's a difficult place to come, but the players have dug in and got a good result". The return leg is at Old Trafford in the first week of March.