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John OShea Biography
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John Francis O'Shea (born April 30, 1981 in Waterford, Ireland) is a professional footballer, who currently plays for Manchester United.
After completing his schooling in Waterford, O'Shea travelled to Manchester and finally joined Manchester United after spending summers travelling to England to train with the Academy. He signed his Professional forms at 17 and then finally made his professional debut in 1999 against Aston Villa at Villa Park. Following loan spells at Bournemouth and Royal Antwerp he returned to Manchester and made his mark on the United first team in the 2002-03 season, proving his versatility by playing at times at left-wing, right-back, centre-back and central midfield during the successful Premiership campaign.
O'Shea earned his first senior cap for the Republic of Ireland on 15 August 2001, when he came on as an 84th minute substitute at home to Croatia. His debut ended in disappointment, however, when he gave away a penalty in injury time, that resulted in Ireland conceding their lead, and the game ending 2-2.
After an excellent debut season, in which he famously nutmegged Real Madrid's Luís Figo in a UEFA Champion's League match and inspired a terrace chant sung to the tune of The Beatles' 'Yesterday'. However, in November 2002, in a moment even more famous than the nutmeg against Figo, O'Shea missed a scoring chance against Manchester City (in a match that United ultimately lost 3-1) that has been described as the worst miss in footballing history.
In the 2003-04 season he frustrated many Manchester United supporters with a series of lacklustre performances before being pushed down in the pecking order by the arrival of Gabriel Heinze. He displayed indifferent form in the 2004-05 season and was linked with a move away from Manchester, with Newcastle and Liverpool being linked with the Irishman. One of the highlights of Manchester United's otherwise slightly disappointing season was the 2-4 away victory against Arsenal, in which O'Shea scored an incredible fourth goal by chipping Arsenal goalkeeper Manuel Almunia. What followed was a bizarre celebration where it appeared he did not know what to do with himself, perhaps due to his surprisingly brilliant finish, as well the elation to be comprehensively beating one of the Premiership's strongest teams. Others believe that O'Shea was attempting to imitate the "celebration" of United legend, Éric Cantona, when he scored a brilliant goal into the top left corner. An injury to Gary Neville in the 2005-06 season also gave O'Shea more first-team opportunities. He was criticised for his lacklustre performances last season, and was reportedly one of the players lambasted by United veteran Roy Keane in a recent interview on the club's MUTV channel. More recently O'Shea has been played in the centre of midfield by Ferguson as United are short of cover in that position. Since being used in this position he has been considered increasingly impressive by fans and pundits alike, and is considered to have played a significant role in providing the stability which enabled United to extend their winning run to 9 games, after defeating rivals Arsenal 2-0 on Sunday 9th April 2006. It is now widely believed that he is regaining the form which made him an exciting prospect several seasons previously.
On February 4, O'Shea deputised for Edwin van der Sar in goal after the latter was taken off the pitch for a suspected broken nose, and Manchester United had used all three substitutes previously.
source: wikipedia.org
GNU Free Documentation License
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