Manchester United were delighted to confirm, today, that the Aston Villa winger, Ashley Young, completed his move to Old Trafford, signing a five-year contract.
A club statement read: "Manchester United is delighted to announce it has reached agreement with Aston Villa for the transfer of Ashley Young. The player passed a medical in Manchester this week and has agreed a five-year contract."
A short while after the season ended, Ashley spoke with the Villa board to inform them of his intention to play Champions League football. Having made 15 appearances for England, I feel he now realises his potential, and sought bigger challenges.
Young, 25, had just one year left on his deal at Villa Park and with the new Aston Villa (and former Birmingham) manager, Alex McLeish, resigned to losing Young, the deal has now been completed.
He joins Blackburn's England Under-21 defender Phil Jones who moved to Old Trafford for between £16.5m and £20.5m earlier this month and with Atletico Madrid goalkeeper David de Gea likely to move to Manchester before the new season, United have really begun to signal their intent for 2011-12.
Manchester United star Cristiano Ronaldo has won the prestigious Ballon d'Or trophy for 2008, polling 446 points from a maximum of 480, to oust his closest rivals, Lionel Messi and Fernando Torres into 2nd and 3rd place respectively.
The Portugese winger scored an incredible 42 goals as Manchester United won the Champions League and Premier League double last season. Despite a less than spectacular performance at Euro 2008, the world's football journalists had no hesitation voting him for the most prestigious individual award in world football, awarded by France Football magazine.
"It is one of the most beautiful days of my life, something I dreamed of as a child," said the 23-year-old winger.
Ronaldo becomes only the third Portuguese player to lift the famous trophy - after Eusebio and Luis Figo - and the fourth Manchester United player to take the prestigious gong. He is the first Premier League player since Michael Owen in 2001 to scoop the award.
AC Milan are through to the final of the UEFA Champion's League for 2007 with a crushing win over Manchester United at the San Siro.
The Red Devils were distinctly off-colour for such an important game and Milan's Brazilian maestro Kaka duly punished them with a goal inside the first 11 minutes to add to the brace he scored in the 1st leg.
Confusion in the United defence between Gabriel Heinze and Nemanja Vidic gave Milan their second goal of the evening with Clarence Seedorf the scorer.
It took until the hour for United to really get going but they still did not manage to break down the Milan defence and shortly after, it was all over - game, set and match Milan when substitute Alberto Gilardino was released down the middle and he ran 40 yards before coolly curling the ball home.
While a Liverpool - Manchester United would have been absolutely mouth-watering, we will now witness a rematch of the epic 2005 final between Liverpool and Milan which the mighty Reds came out on top after coming back from 3 - 0 down to win on penalties.
The Champion's League final 2007 will be in Athens on May 23rd.
Here is the match highlight for the recent charity match between Manchester United and a European select side.
The match highlight contains all 7 goals from the Red Devil's 4-3 win and includes Portugese winger Cristiano Ronaldo's amazing free-kick (how on earth does he get the ball to swerve from left to right with the inside of his foot?!).
A star-studded 22-man European squad will face English Premier League leaders Manchester United in a charity match on Tuesday evening (GMT) to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the creation of the European Union and of Manchester United becoming the first English side to play in UEFA's European club competition.
Liverpool players Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher, Barcelona captain Carlos Puyol and many of the Italian World Cup-winning squad will take part in the match as well as three Brazilian stars - Ronaldinho, Ronaldo and Juninho - taking part as 'guests'.
Former Manchester United player David Beckham has had to withdraw from the European select-side due to injury, but will return to his old stomping ground to watch the game from the stands.
Retired France legend Zinedine Zidane has turned down the opportunity to take to the pitch for the select-side - whether or not Italian Marco Materazzi's presence in the squad had anything to do with his decision, we do not know.
'Zizou' ended his career with a red card after thrusting his head into Materazzi's chest in the World Cup final of 2006.
The full Europe XI squad are as follows:
Goalkeepers: Oliver Kahn, Grégory Coupet, Iker Casillas. Defenders: Paolo Maldini, Jamie Carragher, Eric Abidal, Lilan Thuram, Carles Puyol, Marco Materazzi, Fabio Grosso. Midfielders: Gianluca Zambrotta, Steven Gerrard, Juninho Pernambucano, Florent Malouda, Luis Miguel, Gennaro Gattuso, Andrea Pirlo. Strikers: Ronaldinho, Ronaldo, Alessandro Mancini, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Henrik Larsson.
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