Manchester United supporters might be forgiven for welcoming yet another highly rated youth prospect to Old Trafford with a grudging nod. After all, while United’s policy of hoovering up the very finest youth talent, especially creative midfielders, is a prudent one, the here-and-now also matters such is the shambles of the Reds’ central midfield at times in the past two seasons. Yet, another ‘prospect’ it is, with confirmation that Brazilian-born Belgian teenager Andreas Hoelgebaum Pereira will join the club 1 January 2012, the day he turns 16.
Pereira, an attacking playmaker who can be deployed in midfield or as a shadow striker, will join from PSV Jugend, Eindhoven’s academy side, for nominal compensation. The player has agreed a three-and-a-half year deal with United.
Starting out at KVSK Lommel in Belgium before moving to PSV aged nine, Pereira has developed a reputation as one of Europe’s finest youth talents. He has been reportedly contacted by most of Europe’s leading clubs and played in the Nike Manchester Premier Cup this summer.
“I am an offensive midfielder, a real 10,” Pereira told De Telegraaf.
“Setting up my team mates, scoring and a good shot are my qualities. PSV knew that I was talking with some clubs and they respected my choice. I had some doubts but at the end Manchester United is my dream team to play for. I have been a few times to Manchester United to have a look. I got a tour and spoke to Sir Alex Ferguson. Being a 15-year-old, to talk with such a man was great.”
The 15-year-old is the son of Marcos Pereira, a retired Brazilian striker who played in Europe for BSC Young Boys, Mechelen, Sint-Truidense and Royal Antwerp. Indeed, Pereira senior appeared alongside Phil Bardsley, Eddie Johnson, Souleymane Mamam and Dong Fangzhuo for Antwerp in the 2003-4 season.
Junior’s team-mate Zakaria Bakkali was recent linked with move to Manchester City, although his signature is equally sought-after. Bakkali won this year’s Manchester United Premier Cup ‘Most Valuable Player’ award. It was a tournament whose final was played at Old Trafford of all places.
Pereira will join a growing Belgian youth international contingent in Manchester, Marnick Vermijl, Charni Ekangamene and Adnan Januzaj at the club. Meanwhile, United has previously raided Holland for Dutch youth winger Gyliano van Velzen, who stared in the Academy’s run to FA Youth Cup victory last season. United have previously signed Ruud van Nistelrooy, Jaap Stam and Park Ji-sung from PSV Eindhoven.
Here’s some video of Pereira doing stepovers!
Sounds like Anderson Hopefully he’ll turn out good.
We haven’t done well with South Americans – Rafael and Fabio are the exceptions, barring injury of course.
Sir Ryan Giggs? No no no. Sir Paul Scholes say.
Tevez was top for us to be fair, until it became obvious he is a cunt.
Diego tried, he really did.
But then there’s Klerberson… yeah fair enough he evens it out!
Good grief…
We need a battle savvy, sargeant major… and they sign another cub scout.
“Badges, to god-damned hell with badges! We have no badges. In fact, we don’t need badges. I don’t have to show you any stinking badges, you god-damned cabrón and ching’ tu madre! Come out from that shit-hole of yours. I have to speak to you.”
In 5 years we’ll have ourselves a decent attacking midfielder
I can’t believe Man Utd are still doing the signing of young midfielders.We ve got almost a dozen of them at the academy.Why wouldn’t Fergie sign up some nice midfielder to hold United’s midfield instead of all these kiddos he’s signing.United play a disgusting style of play now.Half baked players like Anderson,Valencia,Nani who has failed to utilise his potential.I pity Unted.And as a fan ,I pity myself.Am done with these lacklustre performances.
then go and support another team then!!
Sopme of us United fans are suffering and we get this from you. Shame you obviously don’t know the difference between what’s lacklustre and what isn’t. And since we are talking difference, I bet there’s another two things you don’;t know or can’t tell the difference between.
Call youself `Cantona’: shame for poor Eric, a poet and a philosopher having his name stolen by u
it’s like Ferrari giving their name to the things they put together in Chinese chop shops
Oh — and have a go at me back — I dare you Mr smartarse!
he seems small and raw, he’ll need a good seven years in our reserves before he’s ready to be sold on at a minimal profit
Whatever happened to Herbie Simms?
Whatever happened to Herbie Simms.?
He talks shite over here now:
http://www.manchesterunitedrumours.co.uk/
another prospect to swell our youth ranks…
its all good and well looking to the future. this is something all top sides should be doing…
BUT…picking up yet another kid who ‘might’ make the grade (or to put another way, has got the odds stacked right against him and in likely-hood may not make it, such is life for kids trying to make in the modern game) should not be the priority at the moment.
we need to be building a team for here and now, lest we really do get left behind by city. all it will take is one or two more top signings to augment their squad, and for them to get rid of some of the problem players/players on silly wages comparative to their talent and they will genuinely be head and shoulders above us.
as a good comparison – look at our squad in comparison to theirs – who would get in their team and who would get in ours.
UTD – rooney, vidic, maybe nani, evra back in form – but not at the moment (perhaps not anymore). thats about it.
CITY – Aguero, silva, nasri (who sits on the bench!), kompany, y. toure, johnson, balotelli on current form, even milner is better than our midfielders at the moment FFS!!
worrying times…
We need to be careful that we are not emulating Arsenal from 7 years ago. They were stock piling young players with loads of potential and telling their fans that the future will be Arsenals. Well seven year later I don’t think that Arsenal fans are very happy with their future.
Plan for the future but live in the present.
aint he just a little cutie
him and sweet pea will do ever so well together
some posters here sounds like arsenals fan in disguise. United have always been good with youngsters eversince Sir Matt’s era, so its wasnt strange if we buy, buy or produce another youngsters to the first team. we always look for the future not only present..
Oh here you go again.Classes in basic English are obviously a bit too advanced for you. We need those nice big blocks with huge letters on them — I don’t know, four or five should be enough. Maybe with the improvement in vocabularly you’ll start thinking like a human being.
There is something called management. If you guys criticizing know so much about the game, you would be sitting on one of the benches over there instead of complaining here on blogs. You badly need to realize that SAF has been sitting and not shitting there for the last 25 years and constantly winning major and minor honours, cups, titles, individual achievements. With a less than perfect management ability, u can do that over 2 or 3 years only, not a quarter of a decade. Like Mourinho does and then leave. One question: has any manager done that in the modern era of football??? Please don’t give me shitty comments that i see everyday on football blogs. If you want a manager to win each and every title, it happens only in indian movies, go watch and comment on their blogs, not football ones.
Yeah those indian movies are great (shite, meant for benders), but seeing as though we are in England and are an English club, i’d rather we go for the grittier more realistic Shane Meadows/Ken Loach type of offering…which is what United is all about considering we are an English club
ffs this aint no bollywood comparison, it is serious
I don’t know who’s talking shit but what I have been telling you is all coming true now. Have you been listening to SAF talking on BBC Sports? He is on talking quite often now and he sounds like a man that has lost his marbles. Iam tired of him now. He needs to retire.
If he thought that bringing in Cleverley was the answer to his midfield problems, then he has really lost his mind. He claimed that he was unable to find a world class midfielder to sign, but that’s pure BULLSHIT! We needed two world class midfielders and a right back. Even a blind man could see that! Mancini made sure he had a world class backup for every position and as you see Man. City have eleven world class players on the field and another eleven world class players on the subs bench. How you going to stop a team with all of this quality? Yet we can beat them if SAF would have paid attention and fixed his midfield instead of being so arrogant. Unless things start to go horribly wrong, Man.City should have this league wrapped up by the end of January. A team with 800 million pounds of players and Mancini says he is looking to spend another 100 million in the January transfer window to replace Tevez and to bring in a world class defensive midfielder. The only money SAF will spend in January is on more chewing gum. How can a great manager like SAF with all his wisdom and who knows the quality of his team leave his midfield as it was last season and then expect to come back this season and win the league and Champions league when he knows the lack of quality in midfield costs us from beating Barcelona. As I have the greatest respect for SAF and for all you guys who express your opinions, I just feel we need a new manager with fresh ideas. Are we really producing any superstars out of the football academy? We may need to make a clean sweep and bring in new scouts, coaches and manager. Get rid of David Gill and Mike Phelan also. Operation, CLEAN SWEEP.
Totally agree with you. Fergie is not the manager he was and without a clean sweep our club is going to run out of energy, ideas, the old iron will etc.It will take a while before we get so fed up of living on past glories that a revolution starts to happen at OT. I think City are really good and will win the League but not as early as January. Great pain awaits United fans who live in Manchester when this happens.
I can’t believe that Mancini is in the market for a world class defensive midfield player, with what he has in MF already. Maybe he is saying this just to make it more difficult for us to sign a defensive MF player in January
It amazes me how Utd fans who say we should accept everything as it stands, that if you are negative you should f off and support another club, and think we will win the League because wqe are United and we tend to win this competition — how these guys can switch their computers on and send emails and stuff: I didn’t think one could do this with one’s eyes shut.
Get rid of fergie??
This is a piss take right?