August 6 – Sporting Cronaldo Dazzles Fergie

WE’RE really sorry to do this to you, but today’s story is all about the one man we’ve all had enough of this summer. Today in 2003 Manchester United were undone by Sporting Lisbon in a preseason friendly thanks to match-winning performance from an 18-year-old Christiano Ronaldo.

United were in Portugal to commemorate the opening of Sporting’s brand new stadium, the EstÃ¡dio JosÃ© Alvalade, a shimmering 50,000-capacity citadel of a stadium, built as part of Portugal’s winning Euro 2004 bid. In a stroke of genius the stadium designers arranged the seats in random colours to give the impression that the ground is always full. If only the same was done at the Reebok Stadium in Bolton.

Sporting secured a glamour tie with United for their opening game and stunned their English opponents with a 3-1 win. Young Cronaldo was at the hub of all the action, creating two goals for the Portuguese and generally running rings around his soon-to-be team-mates.

Ronaldo had previously impressed for Portugal in the European Under-19 Championships in Liechtenstein as the likes of Chelsea and Liverpool cast admiring glances in his direction.

But it was Ronaldo’s performance against United that made Fergie make the first move, as he said: “After we played Sporting last week the lads in the dressing room talked about him constantly, and on the plane back from the game they urged me to sign him – that’s how highly they rated him. He is one of the most exciting young players I’ve ever seen.”

On August 12 the young winker signed on the dotted line at Old Trafford, become the first Portuguese player to sign for United after the clubs agreed a £12.24m fee.

He’s not fared too badly since. At the moment – quick check of the gossip column on the BBC website – it looks as though United have held off the interest of Real Madrid to keep him at the club, but if we don’t see another headline until the transfer window slams shut at the end of the month we’ll eat our hat.

See the dead-ball prowess of everyone’s favourite modest, down to earth and humble player below and to tide you over until tomorrow’s next dose of OTFD have a look at what we were educating the world about last year here.