Louis van Gaal admits Juan Mata’s free-kick routine was stolen from FC Midtjylland

LvG is still paying attention at least.

Manchester United advanced to the sixth round of the FA Cup with a comfortable 3-0 win at Shrewsbury last night, the highlight coming when Juan Mata curled this free-kick into the top corner in first-half injury-time. It was a lovely effort which featured the unusual alignment of three United players in front of the goalkeeper in an offside position. There were plenty who believed the goal should have been chalked off, but United boss Louis van Gaal revealed that he told his players to use the routine after seeing it used against United by Danish side FC Midtjylland in last Thursday's Europa League defeat. Van Gaal himself thought the players in front of the goalkeeper should have been called offside, but after being told by the referees in Denmark that the players were not interfering with play, he decided to adopt the same tactic against the Shrews. "We have learnt because we have analysed Midjytlland," Van Gaal said. "And we have seen that they are doing that and we think it is always offside.

"We have asked the referees, at the time the Portuguese referees, and they are saying no, there's no offside you can do that.

"That's why we have learned off Midjytlland the taking of the free-kicks and today we scored, and that's good I think."

Judge for yourselves.

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