Manchester United Visits Harvard

Willliam and Kate weren’t the only famous Brits stateside this week as British football club and English Premier League champions Manchester United took time off today from their pre-season training tour to visit Harvard Tuesday.

The team took pictures with the John Harvard statue and University President Drew G. Faust, who presented team captain Nemanja Vidic and head coach Sir Alex Ferguson with Harvard sweatshirts. Faust gave the rest of the team Harvard caps.

The team draped John Harvard in a Man U scarf for the occasion, but Barcelona fans will be happy to hear that each Man U player rubbed the toe.

While Park Ji-Sung posed for pictures with delighted tourists, Rio Ferdinand took pictures of Harvard Yard with his cell phone. He joked with his teammates, saying “You want to study here? You can’t study here. Neither can you.”

Later that day, former Man U player Dennis Irwin led a clinic at Harvard Stadium for students in Man U’s soccer school.

But if any English soccer team were to visit Harvard—and foist its colors onto the school's namesake—perhaps it's only appropriate that it would be Man U. Both the school and the team are, after all, two of the most storied yet resented organizations in the world and share equally insufferable hangers on ("the Harvard man" and Man U fans).

The team is in town to play the New England Revolution in Gillette Stadium Wednesday.