If you know anything about former Manchester United midfielder Bebe, chances are you’ll know a shorthand version of his rags-to-riches tale.
Raised by his grandmother before spending his teenage years in an orphanage, Tiago Manuel Dias Correia (nicknamed Bebe, ‘baby’, by his older brother) became a celebrity overnight after United sanctioned a £7.4million fee for the player back in 2010.
At the time, Bebe had spent just five weeks on the books of Portuguese club Vitoria de Guimaraes. Rumours that United’s scouts had only seen clips on YouTube spread across the internet like wildfire, amid half-true tales that he’d played at the Homeless World Cup.
It quickly became apparent that the 20-year-old wasn’t up to the requisite standard at Old Trafford. Suffering the indignity of being subbed off as a substitute by Sir Alex Ferguson after some of the most wildly overhit crosses you’ll ever see, told you as much. Cristiano Ronaldo, he wasn’t.
Over time, the story has inevitably been exaggerated to give the impression that Bebe was some kind of Ali Dia-esque chancer. A decade later, there’s no doubt that some will remember him as a total no-hoper lacking any ability at all. The fact that his transfer to United was later investigated by Portuguese authorities augments that idea.
Bebe might not have made it to the very top of the game at Manchester United, but he’s forged a respectable career from his humble beginnings and earned himself cult hero status at Rayo Vallecano, the proudly leftist club based in the working-class, multiracial Madrid suburb of Vallecas.
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