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Manchester United great rolls back the years as Sir Alex Ferguson quote resurfaces after viral clip
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The Man Utd favourite was on hand to haunt a former foe in a charity match over the weekend.

Manchester United great Park Ji-sung rolled back the years after a clip of him playing in a charity match went viral over the weekend.

The South Korean legend was one of many illustrious names to take part in The Nexon Icons Match at the Seoul World Cup Stadium, which pitted a team of famous former attacking players against a team of famous former defensive stars.

Park scored a consolation goal for the attack-minded FC Spear, who ended up losing 4-1 to Shield United, but it something else the 43-year-old did during that match that caught the eye in a viral video clip.

Four years ago, Wayne Rooney revealed how Sir Alex Ferguson had instructed Park to pay special attention to the Italian midfielder before masterminding such an iconic win. "It's crazy but if you mentioned Cristiano Ronaldo to a 12-year-old, they would immediately say, 'Yeah, he was a brilliant player for Manchester United,'" Rooney told The Sunday Times. "But if you said 'Ji-sung Park' they may not know who he was. Yet all of us who played with Park know he was almost as important to our success.

"That's because of what Park gave to the collective and I want to talk about teams. They - not stars - are the most important thing in sport. I remember Fergie's team talk before playing AC Milan. He literally said to Park: 'Your job today is not about touching the ball, it's not about making passes, your job is Pirlo. That's all: Pirlo.' At the time Andrea Pirlo was averaging 110 passes per game, something stupid like that, and out of those, about 60-70 were forward passes, passes that could hurt you.

He had this trick: when the ball came to him from the full-back, he would play it first time over your centre-back's head, for Andriy Shevchenko or Kaka to run through. Pirlo was the best I've seen at that pass.

"So Fergie said to Park: 'He cannot be allowed that pass. You cannot be one yard or one second late.' And I think Pirlo barely had 40 passes in that game, and 95 per cent were backwards because Park was so unbelievable at carrying out his orders. The rest of us appreciated that, physically and mentally, what Park managed to do that night was so difficult."

In his 2013 autobiography, 'I Think Therefore I Play', Pirlo himself recalled the nightmarish experience he had trying to play against Park. "At Milan, he [Ferguson] unleashed Park Ji-sung to shadow me. He rushed about at the speed of an electron. He'd fling himself at me, his hands all over my back, trying to intimidate me. He'd look at the ball and not know what it was for. They'd programmed him to stop me. His devotion to the task was almost touching. Even though he was a famous player, he consented to being used as a guard dog."