Owen, Henry light up New York

Manchester United’s Michael Owen and New York Red Bulls’ Thierry Henry flipped the switch to light up the Empire State Building on Tuesday.

The building will shine the white, green and blue colours of the Major League Soccer on its North and South sides, while on the East and West sides the building will shine all red for Manchester United.

United tackle an MLS All-Stars team on Wednesday at the Red Bull Arena in New Jersey.

“We’ve been over in the States for over two weeks now and we’ve had three good results against different American sides and this has got a good feel to the game,” Owen said.

“Obviously, it’s got an All-Star team with a lot of players that we already know about, that we’ve played against, obviously with the likes of Thierry Henry and David Beckham.”

“So we are really excited for the match and we’re obviously here to win, we want to win, even though it’s a friendly.”

Owen, who has signed a new deal with United, said manager Sir Alex Ferguson was still weighing up his options for the new season.

“Well at this stage of the season, there is a lot of change because we’re all not where we want to be yet. It’s still pre-season,” Owen said.

“We’ve still got three or four weeks until we start properly.”

“So, the manager chops and changes things and the training that we do is equally as important as well to get that fitness up, but obviously once the season starts then that’s when the manager will generally pick his stronger teams and that’s when we’ll see who he picks.”

United will be hoping for a repeat of last season’s All-Star result when they ran out 5-2 winners in Houston.