Adnan Januzaj was the future of Manchester United. What went wrong?

(Additional contributors: Laurie Whitwell)

As the Manchester United players came down for breakfast in their five-star hotel, there was a whiteboard showing their schedule for the day in black marker pen.

They were in Hong Kong, preparing for their first season after Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement, and each morning a member of staff would update this board with training times and all the other details about when they were eating, the arrangements for community events and everything else that went into a pre-season tour.

Yet on that particular day, somebody had rubbed out the correct arrangements and inserted a concoction of bogus times. Appointments were missed. People went missing. All the meticulous organisation to plan the day was jeopardised by a practical joke.

The story has never been told before and, according to well-placed sources, the finger of suspicion was pointed at Alexander Buttner, the reserve left-back.

Buttner had signed from Vitesse the previous year and, behind the scenes, had a side to him that some members of staff did not like. But the suspicion was also that he had been aided and abetted by Adnan Januzaj, the player tipped to be the next star of the team.

Buttner, Januzaj and Rio Ferdinand at the pre-season camp in 2013 (Photo: John Peters/Manchester United via Getty Images)

It was David Moyes’ getting-to-know-you period and his staff had misgivings about the way Januzaj, then 18, had teamed up with a player who was six years older and not always seen as a positive influence. OK, it was only a practical joke, but it was not the sort of prank that would have happened if Ferguson was in charge. And it was decided somebody ought to have a quiet word with Januzaj to advise him to think carefully about what was expected of a United player.

Did the message get through? It doesn’t appear so, according to some of the people who were involved at the time. Januzaj, one says, thought he knew better. “But he was young. To be fair, he was very young.”

There is a lovely passage in Ferguson’s autobiography about the first time he saw the schoolboy Ryan Giggs running with the ball at his feet on United’s training pitches.

It was one of those rare and priceless moments, Ferguson wrote, that made all the sweat and frustration and misery of management worthwhile.

“A gold miner who has searched every part of the river or mountain and then suddenly finds himself staring at a nugget could not feel more exhilaration than I did watching Giggs that day. I shall always remember my first sight of him, floating over the pitch at the Cliff so effortlessly that you would have sworn his feet weren’t touching the ground.”

Januzaj was another nugget. He had signed from Anderlecht’s youth system, aged 16, after growing up in Brussels as the son of Kosovar-Albanian parents. He carried his head high and had a natural grace, beautifully balanced, when he took on opponents. He was, in Ferguson’s eyes, an ideal wearer of United’s colours.

Eric Steele was United’s goalkeeping coach at the time and saw, close up, the work put in by reserve-team manager Warren Joyce to prepare Januzaj for the Premier League.

“I remember when Januzaj first came in, he was a talent,” Steele says. “I’d heard a lot about him. He had an arrogance and a swagger, which I think a lot of people in the club liked. But he had to get fit.

“Warren said he had to toughen up, get fitter, get stronger. He was really tough on him initially. I remember in one game Warren actually put him up front. I said, ‘What are you doing?’ He said, ‘Steeley, he’s got to learn. I am going to be very interested to see how he takes it. Because you know what will happen, centre-halves will kick him. It will be physical for him’.

“You were getting him well prepared to go in with the first team. All of a sudden, you had the likes of Paul Scholes and Darren Fletcher and if you didn’t stand up, you would soon realise, ‘Wow’. That’s what Januzaj found when he first went in, ‘Wow’.”

Scholes, in particular, had a habit of introducing himself to newcomers with some of his more industrial challenges. “Januzaj came off at the end of that game and, I tell you what, he never shirked a tackle,” Steele says. “He got involved, he had a really good game as a No 9.”

Januzaj lifts the Barclays Under-21 Elite Group trophy in 2013 (Photo: Matthew Peters/Manchester United via Getty Images)

Januzaj was, in the words of another United official, the “future of the club” — rated so highly that Ferguson broke one of his own managerial rules to mention the teenager, completely out of the blue, in a press conference just a few weeks before announcing his retirement. Watch out, Ferguson said, for “the Belgian boy” and then he leant back in his chair, nodding to the sound of his own words. Januzaj, he predicted, was going to be some player.

What has happened since serves as a reminder, perhaps, why Ferguson was usually reluctant to talk up young players too much.

Januzaj made such a spectacular entrance Moyes felt compelled to acclaim him as the best player of that age he had seen since Wayne Rooney. United’s executives recall their joy when Januzaj committed himself to a five-year contract one Friday evening at the Lowry hotel, the team’s regular pre-match meeting point. Real Madrid, Barcelona and Paris Saint-Germain had all been trying to prise Januzaj away. The Football Association was exploring whether he could play for England. Moyes described him, in private, as “the young Cruyff” — and he didn’t mean Jordi.

As it is, Januzaj is preparing to take on his former club in the Europa League with a Real Sociedad side that has finished 12th, ninth and sixth in his three previous seasons in Spain. This season, they are fifth. Januzaj, now 26, has been to two World Cups with Belgium, which indicates he must have done something right. Closer inspection, however, shows he has been restricted to 12 caps, eight as a substitute, and has never managed a 90-minute appearance for his country. His only senior trophy, of sorts, remains the 2013 Community Shield victory against Wigan Athletic, which was his debut for United’s first team as an 83rd-minute substitute. And there will always be regrets when the expectations were once so high.

Januzaj has been described to The Athletic as the classic example of a player who was given too much too young. Internally, the story goes that Januzaj’s advisers had provisionally agreed the financial terms of a contract before returning to United to cite the money on offer from PSG and ask for some new, mind-boggling sums. Ed Woodward, who had just started in his new role as executive vice-chairman, is said to have signed it off, regardless. And maybe it is not a coincidence that from that point onwards, there were only 11 occasions when the boy who shared his birthday with Cristiano Ronaldo and Neymar played a full Premier League match for the club.

When The Athletic started speaking to people about Januzaj’s career trajectory it was clear that we had to begin with Louis van Gaal. Was this just another story of a super-talented kid who did not have the wit or gumption to make the most of his ability? Or was there more to it and, as Januzaj’s sympathisers say, were there mitigating factors that not enough people knew about?

It was on Van Gaal’s watch, after all, that Januzaj fell out of favour and it started to become clear that maybe we would never see all that potential flower fully.

Every time Januzaj is interviewed and asked to explain why it did not work out for him in the way that Ferguson and many others had expected, he always cites Van Gaal as the main factor.

Is that fair? The Athletic emailed Van Gaal to see if he was willing to be interviewed. His response came back within 24 hours.

I have absolutely no need to defend myself against so much injustice!
The self-image of players leaves the wishes!
And my career as a coach/manager shows just how many young players could take their chances under my leadership!
With a kind box,
LvG

Van Gaal is entitled to defend his record bearing in mind he brought through Clarence Seedorf, Patrick Kluivert, Xavi, Andres Iniesta and Thomas Muller, among others, during a long managerial career taking in Ajax, Barcelona and Bayern Munich.

Yet it also indisputable that Van Gaal slowed down the tactics at Old Trafford and implemented a playing style that worked against several players — Januzaj being one, Angel Di Maria another — who wanted to bring individualism and spontaneity to the team.

(Photo: Marc Atkins/Mark Leech/Getty Images)

Van Gaal did not trust players who took risks and relied more on individual skill than fitting into a methodical system. Therefore, he was no fan of Januzaj.

Jose Mourinho, the next manager in line, did not like what he saw, either. Neither Van Gaal nor Mourinho was willing to accept, as Ole Gunnar Solskjaer does now with Bruno Fernandes, that the good can outweigh the bad when it comes to players who risk losing the ball by trying something adventurous. And it didn’t help that when Borussia Dortmund signed Januzaj on loan in 2015, they ended up sending him back four months early. Januzaj, it was said, had lost his focus. He was described as becoming too fond of the perks of being a star footballer. This does not entirely add up when another former colleague recalls one occasion when Januzaj was unable to ring a foreign number on his phone because his father, Abedin, had not put enough on the sim card.

Abedin had a considerable influence over his son’s business affairs and, as United and others found out, he was not always an easy man to deal with. Marouane Fellaini became a close confidante to the player and, over time, Januzaj’s room-mate with the Belgium team. “Normally when a player is good-looking and cocky, older pros hate that and smash them up in training,” one source says. “But for Belgium, everyone was calling him ‘mon frere’ and ‘little bro’. The senior Belgium players loved him. Romelu Lukaku, Fellaini, top players put their arms around him.”

But perhaps Januzaj was a victim of timing, too. His only first-team involvement with Ferguson came as an unused substitute in the final game of the manager’s 26-year reign. Moyes lasted only 10 months and, after that, Januzaj quickly found out that United, as Ferguson used to say, was a bus that waited for nobody.

He was young, a bit immature, unaccustomed to fame and embarrassed by a newspaper kiss-and-tell involving a girl who did not seem overly impressed to be taken on a date to Nando’s by a footballer wearing tracksuit bottoms. Nando’s responded by offering Januzaj a £50 voucher for his next visit.

“I liked him,” says Rene Meulensteen, another of United’s former coaches. “He was a good player — skilful, intelligent. But it needs a certain position. He is one of those where you think, ‘Where is his best position?’ Is it from the left coming in? Is it a No 10? He is definitely creative enough.

“You could see why United wanted to bring him to the club. But it’s difficult for any player to break through and then stay on top. He did play quite a bit for Moyes. Under Van Gaal, he faded away. Ferguson thought a lot of him, otherwise he wouldn’t have bought him to the club and got him involved in the first team. But lots of players, for whatever reason, fade away and get their luck somewhere else.”

(Photo: VI Images via Getty Images)

This was also a time, in Joyce’s words, when United had “lost a little bit of control of the loan system”.

Januzaj went to Sunderland on loan for the 2016-17 season, Mourinho’s first year at Old Trafford, to be reunited with Moyes. That, however, turned out to be the nadir of his career. Januzaj’s form deserted him. Sunderland were relegated and the supporters turned on a player who, in happier times, had produced one of his more dazzling United performances, featuring two brilliantly taken goals, at the Stadium of Light.

VIDEO: Ahead of #mufc's trip to the Stadium of Light, watch Adnan Januzaj's two strikes from last season's fixture.https://t.co/AVXzNG2IfP

— Manchester United (@ManUtd) August 23, 2014

Joyce says it was a mistake on United’s part and points out that Wilson also suffered from going out on various loans. “The manager (Ferguson) used to entrust a lot of that to me, picking the right club, picking the right manager, picking the right environment,” Joyce says. “Januzaj and Wilson, they were more about recovering the wages. They were put on loan when they weren’t fit. And you knew they were going to fail.

“The loans got money returns back but they didn’t develop the players how they should have been. It is not all their fault, because they were good players. Januzaj was as skilful a player as I’ve ever seen. So it is sad to see that they didn’t hit the heights that they should have done. Maybe they didn’t have as much help as they could have done. Everybody criticised the players but they could have had better help.”

Januzaj had been at Nike previously. Adidas showed interest but it was New Balance that eventually got him despite an attempt to bump up the price at the final moment. Januzaj, who would later complain that he did not feel too comfortable in his new boots, never lived up to the hype, however.

(Photo: Berengui/DeFodi Images via Getty Images)

Meulensteen makes the point that Januzaj still has the potential to trouble United now he is preparing to line up against them, complete with a new bleached hairdo, for the San Sebastian club that signed him in 2017 for £9.8 million. It has been a long time, though, since we first heard about Januzaj’s potential. And these are the moments when an old quote comes to mind from Ferguson, recalling Peter Barnes’ time at Old Trafford in the late-1980s, that feels apt in the case of Januzaj, too.

“I kept hearing about the potential of this guy (Barnes) when I first came to United,” Ferguson explained. “Everyone was telling me he had such great potential. But he was 30 years old. It’s made me dislike the word. ‘Potential’ — that’s a dangerous word in football.”

(Top photos: Getty Images; design: Sam Richardson)