The news, though not confirmed by the Old Trafford club, was announced in a statement by JS Limited, the agency that negotiated the new deal.

Park, 28, was a regular in United’s 2008-09 winning Premier League season.

The South Korea international, who signed from PSV Eindhoven for £4m in 2005, has been a valuable option in manager Sir Alex Ferguson’s midfield.

Ferguson said during the summer that he was always confident a deal would be done with Park, whose wages are estimated to be about £65,000 a week.

The only Korean to hold a Champions League winner’s medal, Park began his professional career in Japan in 2000, with Kyoto Purple Sanga.

Three years later he made his move to PSV Eindhoven, where in two seasons he scored 13 goals from 64 matches.

He has been on the scoresheet nine times for United in 87 appearances, and scored in each of the last two World Cup finals.

Donovan McNabb completed 26 of 35 passes for 290 yards and 2 touchdowns with an interception in the 30-10 victory over the Browns on Monday night.

It could have been the death knell for a starting quarterback, or the masterstroke motivational tactic of the N.F.L. season.

So far, the decision by Philadelphia Eagles Coach Andy Reid to bench quarterback Donovan McNabb at halftime of the Nov. 23 game against the Baltimore Ravens has worked out better than almost anyone thought it would at the time. McNabb was stumbling and bumbling, and the Eagles were going down the drain with him. The benching — the first for McNabb in his pro career — lasted until the next day, when Reid reinstalled him as the starter.

McNabb is still struggling to hide how miffed he remains at the slight, but he has also been on fire ever since. He has led the Eagles (8-5-1) to victories over the Cardinals, the Giants and the Browns, propelling them back into the National Football Conference wild-card playoff race.

In those three games McNabb completed 72 of 104 passes for 741 yards and 7 touchdowns with one interception. He compiled a passer rating of 107.9. He had tossed seven interceptions in the four games leading up to the benching.

McNabb completed 26 of 35 passes for 290 yards and 2 touchdowns with an interception in the 30-10 victory over the Browns on Monday night. After the game, Reid said that he had expected the benching to have this effect. But at the time the move was clearly a last-ditch attempt to right a listing season.

“It tells you about the kid, what a great person he is, great guy and what a great football player he is, and I think that he’s playing right now as well as he’s ever played,” Reid told reporters on Tuesday. “I think it’s a tribute to him and the guys around him. I think that they’ve all stepped their game up a little bit.”

It helps that two of the three victories have come against teams — Arizona and Cleveland — without great pass defenses and that Reid has again turned more consistently to Brian Westbrook to run the ball.

Despite all of the signals, though, McNabb seems to remain unhappy that Reid, his champion since he entered the league in 1999, sat him down while other units of the team were nearly as underwhelming as he was. In an interview with ESPN shortly after the game Monday night, McNabb wondered aloud why he was made the scapegoat.

“I don’t go back to the benching because I personally don’t agree with the benching,” he said on television.

Later, he sounded softer: “I’m always happy. I’m happy to be out here just playing football, and that’s the most important thing. That’s something I told myself no matter what situation I’m in, I’m going to have a ball out here and the people around me are going to enjoy it, too.”

On the day of the benching, the Eagles were trailing the Ravens by 10-7 at halftime. McNabb’s backup, Kevin Kolb, struggled in the second half, and Baltimore rolled to a 36-7 victory.

Whether McNabb’s relationship with Reid has been irreparably harmed will not be known until after the season, when they will have to decide if they can — or want to — coexist for another season. The decision may be made easier depending on the team’s playoff fate. The Eagles must beat Washington and Dallas, teams that defeated them earlier in the season, and hope for a loss by either the Falcons or the Buccaneers to make the playoffs.

Jason Witten took the blame for slipping on the interception that lost the game.

The gold-and-black sign flapping in the wind like a gigantic Terrible Towel on Sunday night at Heinz Field might have been the final indignity for the Dallas Cowboys. It read: “America’s Real Team.” Ouch.

How many more slaps to the face can the Cowboys possibly take?

From the look and sound of their pin-drop silent locker room after their 20-13 defeat to the Steelers, not many more. Coach Wade Phillips called the loss, in which the Cowboys blew a 10-point fourth quarter lead, the toughest he has had with the Cowboys, which is saying something considering that he has lost enough games that he might not return next year.

Over and over, Jason Witten took the blame for slipping on the interception that lost the game. Jerry Jones, the Cowboys’ owner, was ashen, explaining over and over that he was not worried about his team’s heart, but about its numbers.

The critical number is five, as in the number of losses. “I’m sick,” Jones said. “I’m sick for the players. We knew if we got to 8-5 that would put it on us to win the final three games probably.”

The Cowboys play the Giants on Sunday night with an opportunity for Dallas to cling to its wild-card hopes (the Giants have already clinched the division). Imagine how different it would have been if the Cowboys had held on to beat the Steelers and were just two games behind the Giants. Instead, in seven minutes, hope gave way to despair.

The Cowboys are tied with the Atlanta Falcons for the sixth playoff spot (the loser of Monday’s National Football Conference South showdown between Carolina and Tampa Bay, both 9-3, would be in the first wild-card spot). But the bigger problem is that the Cowboys have realized their potential for only fleeting moments this season.

The Cowboys spent a lot of money to build a team designed to outscore opponents. You do not put Terrell Owens and Roy Williams on the field together with the idea that you are going to win a lot of defensive battles. But Owens is ranked 28th in the league in receptions and 19th in yardage, and the Cowboys are just 12th in points per game. Too often, the Cowboys have not been able to push the ball down the field when they have most needed to, as was glaringly obvious against the Steelers.

The wind made passing difficult Sunday, but not impossible, as the Steelers’ biggest offensive playmaker, in this case Nate Washington, showed when he caught three passes in the fourth-quarter scoring drive that ended with a touchdown pass to Heath Miller. The biggest Cowboys playmakers — Owens and Williams — caught five passes total, as many as running back Tashard Choice.

The Steelers were no thing of beauty. They have to get their protection problems straightened out and Ben Roethlisberger has to get rid of the ball faster before the playoffs start. And they have now been stopped three times on the 1 at home in the last month, a weird development for a team that once employed someone nicknamed The Bus. But in the mark of a good team merely having a bad day — rather than a not-as-good-as-we-thought team having a bad year, like the Cowboys — the Steelers did just enough to win. When someone asked Coach Mike Tomlin about his offense’s “terrible” performance, he replied: “Terrible is a strong word. Very poor.”

The Cowboys, despite superior talent, were very poor, too.

After the fourth-quarter interception, Owens was seen yelling at a Cowboys assistant coach. Naturally, Owens intimated that the pass intended for Witten, which ended up in Deshea Townsend’s hands, and in the end zone for the Steelers’ winning touchdown, should have gone to him. He said he had one-on-one coverage and that the Steelers defender was playing 10 to 12 yards off him. That was a fair assessment.

This was not: “It’s his job to go out there and assess what the defense is, and he made that decision,” Owens said, implying that Tony Romo’s decision to throw to Witten was the wrong one.

That is just what the Cowboys do not need, a little more strife in a season that has overflowed with it. Adam (used-to-be-Pacman) Jones returned to action after his latest suspension and it was nothing more than a note.

The Cowboys have three brutal games remaining against the Giants, the Ravens and at the Eagles. The Cowboys have sunk into the depths of adversity before and bounced out, but this time Romo cannot come off the injured list to rescue this season — this team — that looks beyond saving.

“I hope this gives us more fight,” receiver Patrick Crayton said. “But to come away with a loss like this is deflating.”

Confronting Reality

It might be time to just say it: the Detroit Lions are probably going to go 0-16. With an inexplicable tendency to get a lead, and then lose it (something the Lions have done in six of their last seven games), Detroit is steaming toward the ignominious.

They might have blown their last best chance Sunday when they lost to the Vikings, who were led, if you want to call it that, by the former starting quarterback Tarvaris Jackson.

With games remaining against the roaring Colts, the Saints and the Packers (only the Saints go to Detroit), the Lions appear doomed to being a punch line.

They can take some solace from the fact that last year’s joke — the Dolphins, who were 0-13 before finally winning their only game of the season — are now tied for first place in the American Football Conference East. Then again, Bill Parcells is unlikely to leave Florida to engineer a turnaround in Detroit any time soon.

The Vikings should not be feeling too great right now, though. Gus Frerotte may miss this week’s game against Arizona with a back injury that forced him from Sunday’s game. Jackson could take back the starting job, which he lost after two games.

More ominous is that a judge could decide the fates of Pat and Kevin Williams, who were allowed to play Sunday while their Starcaps-based league suspensions were reviewed. If those suspensions are upheld, the Williamses will head to the bench and the Vikings will try to cling to their one-game lead without the heart of their defense.

They Just Keep Going

The New England Patriots are back in a tie for first place in the A.F.C. East thanks, in part, to the extraordinary workers they brought back from furlough this week. Rosevelt Colvin and Junior Seau played a significant number of snaps on Sunday.

The Patriots play the Oakland Raiders this week and, after Tedy Bruschi did not return Sunday after leaving the game with a knee injury, you have to wonder if Lawrence Taylor is next on the Belichick/Pioli speed dial.

The Patriots still could miss the playoffs, but in a season beset by injuries, Scott Pioli, the team’s vice president for player personnel, has done a remarkable job fitting in spare parts to keep the engine running — hello, BenJarvus Green-Ellis.

The Patriots deserved raves last year for the dominant team they assembled, but this season might serve as a quieter, but more impressive example of their resourcefulness. Shouldn’t the Lions make Pioli an overwhelming offer to try to bring that resourcefulness to Detroit?