How can one game be seen in such different ways?

	It's striking how differently two newspapers graded the performances of Man Utd's hero, Wayne Rooney (right), and AC Milan's Dida. Andrew Yates/AFP/Getty Images
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In Akira Kurosawa's classic flick Rashomon, four different characters remember the same event in four different (and contradictory) ways.

The "Rashomon Effect" is all about the subjectivity of perception and how different people see different things in different ways.

All of this came to mind reading the papers the day after Manchester United's 3-2 win over AC Milan in the first leg of their Champions League semifinal on Tuesday. It was perhaps the most entertaining match for the unaffiliated fan since the legendary United vs. Real Madrid game back in 2002-03 (which supposedly helped Roman Abramovich fall in love with the sport).

But what was striking was how differently certain papers reported on the performances of certain players.

I looked at two credible sources, Gazzetta dello Sport in Italy and The Times in England. Both papers had a "report card" for each player. The grades were theoretically from 1 to 10 though, in practice, both papers rarely go lower than 5 or higher than 7.

The Times gave Michael Carrick a 4, the lowest grade of any player on the pitch, writing that "he lost his passing range" and "missed a fantastic chance." Gazzetta saw it entirely differently. To that paper, Carrick merited a 6.5 as he worked well in front of the back four and "improved in the second half" (which is curious, as The Times pointed out the opposite, that Carrick "began well" but then tailed off).

Dida got a 4.5 in Gazzetta, but received a 6 in The Times for his "vital stops." Alessandro Nesta was a stellar 7 in Gazzetta, but a mediocre 6 in The Times. And Wayne Rooney earned himself a 9 from The Times, making him Man of the Match, while Gazzetta gave him a 7.5 (reserving the highest grade for Kaká).

What does all this mean? That one of the two journalists who graded the players is incompetent? Not quite. Rather, each expressed his opinion in good faith, it's just that the opinion was colored by the reporter's own personality, background, expectations and footballing culture.

Even though they are supposed to be doing exactly the same job -- grading the players' performances -- they do so from their own perspective. And perspectives vary greatly, not just among those of us in the media, but among fans as well.

Take Dida. Gazzetta evidently felt that his colossal screw-up on the first United goal (and, arguably and to a lesser extent, on the third goal) was simply unacceptable and outweighed anything else he did in the match. To The Times, however, Dida's outstanding save off Darren Fletcher's shot in the second half gave him some degree of redemption. Equally, it appears that Gazzetta thought that Carrick's low-key defensive work was praiseworthy while, perhaps, The Times expected him to do more on the offensive end.

"Every player will tell you that they pay no attention to the grades in the newspapers," Gianluca Vialli once told me. "But, in fact, it's the first thing they check."