Manchester United's Unsung Hero: Ji-Sung Park

Ji-Sung Park went from PSV Eindhoven to Manchester United in 2005 for a transfer fee of five million quid.

At the onset of his United career, Park was hailed as a commercial signing, just a gimmick to sell replica shirts in Asia. He looked to be the next Dong Fangzhuo, who only scored a dozen or so goals in Belgium and largely fannied about, and running a lot without actually doing anything.

But since then, Park has been proving people wrong.

When you look back on the most important games for United in the last couple of years (except for the Champions League Final), you can see that the first players on the team sheet are Rio Ferdinand, Nemanja Vidic, Patrice Evra, Cristiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney and Ji-Sung Park.

The only one of these guys that anyone would argue is world-class is Park, and even still, he probably isn't. But his game is critical when it comes to playing stronger teams off the park.

When a football fan that doesn't watch a lot of games sees Park, he sees a player that has a great engine.

But there is more to his game than that. He's often let down by his main weakness, lack of composure in front of goal, but he has a good footballing brain, nice vision and off-the-ball running that gets him in scoring position quite often.

The thing that he truly excels at, though, is that he is brilliant in closing players down, forcing them to play the ball much sooner than they would have liked. Playing against Park you are never allowed a moment of rest; you get constantly hassled.

The most recent example was the game against Inter Milan, in which Manchester United managed to high-press the Inter team. That left the Italian champions to trying to lob the ball forward in an attempt to get the ball to Adriano and Ibrahimovic.

It is no coincidence that Ibrahimovic was shifted to the left flank, where he was free from Parks' constant interruptions.

When Manchester United played Barcelona in the last Champions League Semifinals, the Devils managed to stop the most potent attack from all of Europe for 180 minutes. Key was Park, who may have had his best two games in the red in those matchups.

It must have been a blow for him to not be selected for the United squad in the  Champions League Final against Chelsea after being such an integral part in their journey to get there.

So next time you see Ji-Sung Park play, I hope you see him as more than just a workhorse, because he is much more than that.

He's a footballer that any manager of any team in the world would love to have.