Freddy Adu is back in England, on tour with the Tampa Bay Rowdies this week and next. Inevitably, it brings back memories of his attempts to make it across the Pond and Adu is likely to think what could have been.

A motto for his career, perhaps.

In November 2006, the 17-year-old - already anointed the next Pele - went on a two-week trial at Manchester United and Sir Alex Ferguson was impressed with what he saw.

"Freddy has done all right," Ferguson said. "He is a talented boy. He'll go back to the US and we'll keep a check on him. When he is 18, we will have to assess what we can do next.

"What we did was to bring him here to give him an idea of what United was like so he could see the place and see how comfortable he was with it.

"He is a very confident and good, young boy but there is nothing we can do about him [Fifa transfer rules did not allow a move abroad until his 18th birthday the following June]."

Ferguson also revealed that United had previously tried to sign him.

"He's only young but we have known of him for a long time. We tried to get him here some years ago but he signed for DC United and that stopped the progress of us keeping tabs on him."