Liverpool's Czech midfielder Vladimir Smicer battles for the ball with Thailand defender Thanongsak Pajakkata (2) while Nirut Surasiang (left and Chukiat Noosalung look on.

Michael Owen scores the opening goal for Liverpool.

Thai fans showing their support for the Reds wave a giant Liverpool flag during the match.

Beckham is by far the most popular Manchester United player among Thai youngsters, according to an opinion poll.

The survey, conducted by Assumption University (Abac) on Tuesday and Wednesday, found that 47.5 per cent of the 1,449 correspondents said England captain Beckham was their most beloved Man U player followed by Ryan Giggs (17.6), Man U captain Roy Keane (10.2), new signing Juan Sebastian Veron (5.0) and Paul Scholes (4.8).

Among Liverpool players, England striker Michael Owen was the most popular, receiving 45.7 percent of votes. Other favourite Reds players were Robbie Fowler (15.5), Stephen Gerrard (10.0), Jamie Redknapp (7.0) and Patrik Berger (7.0).

The poll found that United's popularity beat Liverpool's by 46.2 to 30.6 per cent.

The respondents were students in Bangkok aged between 14 and 24 years old.

The respondents said they would spend a total of more than 250 million baht to welcome the visits by the two English Premier League giants.

Shockingly, a major part of the expected spending spree, or 154 million baht would be for betting, and 98 million would be for buying merchandise.

Thursday 19th July 2001, the day I was waiting for a long time since I heard the news. Liverpool is playing Thai team this day. I was really excited that this day is today! I couldn't even concentrate on learning or anything. Excited enough for not to feel hungry! I didn't eat all the food like normal, I always have it all. My friends think that it's weird and all of them were said that I was over-reacting. I told them that they won't know how I feel because they didn't support Liverpool the same as me. Only some of them were interested but they support Manchester United. They told me that they were waiting for the day that Manchester United will be here as well. They said that with happy faces even though they didn't have the tickets to go to watch Man U at the stadium.

I got the ticket that Richard bought, he bought three tickets for the three of us (Richard, Phong and me!). The tickets had run out quickly for Liverpool and even quicker for Manchester United. We got 200 baht tickets (about about $5) for Liverpool, the cheapest one (200, 400, 500, 600, 1,000, 1,500 baht) because the other ones had run out after only a few days! We bought them on the second day, it was quick. We didn't get the ticket for Manchester United because it had run out in half an hour on the first day! They only sold 5,000 tickets to Thai people out of 60,000 tickets. Others they sold to the Singapore people and sponsors. Why did they do that? So da_n, really unfair. I want to know why they sold most of the tickets to Singapore people while Man. U. are coming to Thailand.

Phong and me quickly came out of school. I rang Richard on my mobile and told him that we were waiting at the bus stop nearby school. We waited for him for about 10 minutes then he came. We quickly went in the car because it was hot and we were sweaty while we waited. We were really excited and tried to go to the stadium as early as we could. The traffic was very bad when we were near there. We were planning to park the car inside the car park in the stadium but they said we have to have a parking ticket if we wanted to park there. We can't park there so we went quite a long away to park at "The Mall" department store. We had to walk back to the stadium because the traffic was slower than walking. First we thought we would be there early enough to choose where to sit but we didn't, the traffic made us late. So we had to sit just near the score board right at the back of the goal but it's ok for watching. We watched them warm up, I can see that Liverpool's players were tired, they moved slowly and didn't run that much. After they finished warming up, they kicked balls up to the seats and let people catch them. They didn't kick to where we sat, that upset me. They went back to the changing room and came out 15 minutes later. It's nearly started...

Michael Owen scored the first goal in this match. That made Liverpool 1 and Thai 0.

Michael Owen scored 2 goals in this match and then the manager changed him.

We didn't watch it all 90 minutes because they (Liverpool) started to walk after 60 minutes. That made the game boring, so we walked out of the stadium and went back home first. We thought we were out early but there were lots of people earlier than us. It was really crowed and bad traffic. It took us nearly 2 hours to get back home.

I was lucky to get the ticket and I was really happy that I came to watch Liverpool playing today. Now I can say that I am a true Liverpool supporter!