Always a lot more than just a friendly, Manchester United and Liverpool played for the title in the preseason International Champions Cup tournament with the Red Devils getting another confidence booster after a 3-1 win, including coming back from an early Steven Gerrard goal through Wayne Rooney, Juan Mata and Jesse Lingard.
As with most friendly matches, the most important minutes came before the massive substitutions that are bound to happen sooner or later. Liverpool got on the scoreboard in Miami first after Phil Jones mistimes his tackle, dropping Raheem Sterling in the box. Steven Gerrard, as always, converted the penalty kick without getting to think too much about it in the 14 minute.
We didn’t see too many chances for the rest of the first half except for one fantastic shot from the edge of the box by Philippe Coutinho, who for now is beating some competition for his position just because his healthy. David de Gea, who didn’t have too much to do during the match provided a solid save, parrying it to a corner kick.
Manchester United weren’t brilliant or dominant, but got their goal 10 minutes into the second half, as a Javier Hernandez cross found Wayne Rooney, covered badly by Martin Skrtel (those lines have been written too many times), scoring the equalizer from close range.
Only two minutes went by and Juan Mata found himself quite open inside the Liverpool box. His shot clipped Sakho who was trying to block the shot with a wild tackle. The deflection was just enough to sent Simon Mignolet in the wrong direction and give Manchester United the lead.
The win was capped off in the 88th minute by the 21 year old Jesse Lingard, a 21-year old attacking midfielder who has spent the last few seasons out on loan. He controlled a cross on the edge of the box and shot it into the Liverpool corner, scoring the finest goal of the match.