Freddy Adu was a teenage sensation in MLS
Freddy Adu trained with Manchester United's academy
Big things were once expected for American playmaker Freddy Adu, who to this day remains perplexed as to why he never got what could have been a career-changing move to England.
Aged just 17 and already a long-established regular in MLS with DC United, Adu was taken on trial at Manchester United in November 2006, and was persistently linked with a move to Old Trafford.
But the move never came about, with Adu briefly moving to Real Salt Lake before heading to Benfica in a $2m.
That turned out to be the start of year upon year of being a squad player at over a dozen clubs for Adu, who told FourFourTwo: "Honestly, I don’t know why the [Manchester United] move didn't happen. I was young and I had my agent bringing me all these offers.
"Benfica just seemed like the best jump for me at the time, the place where I’d have the best chance of playing and developing.
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Freddy Adu during his trial at Manchester United in 2007
Freddy Adu's move to Old Trafford never came
"It didn’t turn out to be that way. My agent thought Benfica was a good idea, and the people around me, my advisors. Everybody did think that Benfica was best for me.
"For me, personally, Portugal’s a great league, but at that time in America, we didn’t know much about the Portuguese league.
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"We knew more about the English league, the Spanish, the Italian, the German, so I wanted to go to one of those. That was always my dream.
"But with the options that were presented, my agent, the adults in the room, thought Benfica was a good jumping-off point.
"Everybody wants to end up playing for one of the bigger clubs in the world, so that was in the back of my mind, but once I got to Benfica, I realised how big Benfica were and how awesome the atmosphere was.
Freddy Adu in action for Benfica
Freddy Adu ended up at Benfica - and then a string of other clubs
"The thing that soured me on Benfica was going through three different coaches in my first year there, and how it was just so up and down everything.
"A new coach comes in, they have their own ideas, they have their own guys that they want to play. Then another coach comes in, he has his own guy...it was just all over the place.
"It was my first season in Europe, and it was quite immediately unsettling. Everything started going sideways and downwards after that."
Steven Chicken has been working as a football writer since 2009, taking in stints with Football365 and the Huddersfield Examiner. Steven still covers Huddersfield Town home and away for his own publication, WeAreTerriers.com. Steven is a two-time nominee for Regional Journalist of the Year at the prestigious British Sports Journalism Awards, making the shortlist in 2020 and 2023.