Manchester United vs. Real Madrid

03/07/2013 - 03h30

It was a difficult choice. Which team to support? I was a keen fan of Real Madrid when I lived in Spain in 1963. I was staying in a pension just off the Puerta del Sol. There was a five Spanish students also staying there from various parts of Spain. We would all go out to the Real Madrid stadium to watch "our" team play. They usually won, as they did this Tuesday. The coach of Real Madrid is the Portuguese José Mourinho. Real Madrid's greatest star is the Portuguese stricker, Cristiano Ronaldo.

But Manchester United is also a legendary football team. Manchester United's Scottish coach, sir Alex Ferguson, has led the club since 1986. Cristiano Ronaldo also used to play for Manchester United before he was bought by Real Madrid for a world record £80 million, in June 2009. He returned for the first time to Old Trafford this week, where he remains very popular, for the Uefa Champions League clash between European football's two richest clubs.

Last month, England's Premier League football clubs narrowly agreed to limits on the losses they are allowed to incure and restrictions on their wage bills. The 20 clubs of the English Premier League have a turnover of £2.52 billion, and average 34,600 attendees a match. Their wage bill is £1.77billion. The 20 clubs in the Spanish Primera Liga have a turnover of £1.72 billion, average 28,500 attendee a match, and have a wage bill of £1.01 billion.

Richard Scudamore, the Premier League's chief executive, told the to "Financial Times" that "the game is not longer the frenzied financial free-for-all of mega-transfer deals, huge wage inflation and chronic club debt". We will see. Recent years has been characterized by wealthy foreign owners buying up English Football Clubs, such as the Russian billionaire, Roman Abramovich, at Chelsea, or sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al Nahyan, from Abu Dhabi, at Manchesteer City. Manchester United is owned by the American Glazer family. All these owners have spent hundreds of millions attracting the world's best players. But the clubs are, in theory, now constrained by the new fair pay rules of Uefa, European football's governing body.

The Manchester United vs. Real Madrid game was controversial. The red card for Nanni deprived Manchester United of a player. Luis Carlos Almeida da Cunha, known as Nanni, is a Portuguese player originally from Praia, Cape Verde, who immigrated to Portugal with his family as a child, where he was later abandoned by his parents.

The game was 1-1, until Cristiano Ronaldo quickly scored Real Madrid's second goal. José Mourinho said, afterwards, that "the best side lost". Which is not much solace for sir Alex Ferguson and his Manchester crew.