The crowd was big, some of the substitutes were not. Over 50,000 turned up to watch Manchester United play Kaiser Chiefs in Pretoria, South Africa, on July 26, 2008.
United were the champions of England and Europe. The main story that week was the pursuit of Dimitar Berbatov in the days when United getting a striker from Tottenham was doable.
Chiefs’ fans seem flamboyant and exotic to European eyes, they sport masks and miners’ helmets while blowing vuvuzela horns and whistles to create a uniquely African atmosphere.
United’s substitutes enter the field: Eagles for Martin, Gibson for Fletcher, Evans for Vidic, Scholes for Carrick, Tevez for Rooney, Campbell for Giggs and Cleverley for Possebon. Tom Cleverley, 18, is making his debut and he heads a Rooney pass in to make it a scoring one. It’s a fine experience for a youngster known as ‘Chunks’ (he couldn’t pronounce ‘TR’ as a kid when referring to swimming trunks), but he’s nowhere near ready to play for the best team in the world on a regular basis.
The midfielder, who United had once considered too small to make it, goes on loan to gain experience. To third-tier Leicester City, where he’s asked to sing a song in front of the first team in an initiation session. He opts for Ain't No Sunshine When She’s Gone. He’ll use that again when he arrives at other new clubs, but the move to Leicester is a shock.
“I went from playing reserve games in front of 300 to really competitive matches in front of 20,000,” he says when I first spoke to him that season. “I was thrown into men’s football against experienced professionals who were playing for their win bonuses. My first 45 minutes for Leicester passed me by before I composed myself at half time and settled down.”
He thrives. The next season, he’s on loan at Watford in the Championship. “I improved as a player and started to score more goals,” he says of the place where he scored 11 goals and learnt to do some basic cooking for himself. Cleverley was voted player of the year at Vicarage Road in 2009/10.
The Premier League is next: Wigan, close to Manchester.
“Roberto Martinez was very strong on tactics, especially against strong teams while I filled out a lot physically thanks to fitness coaches helping me with my gym work,” he explains. It was another success.
It’s now 2011 and Sir Alex Ferguson decides the time is right to give him a real chance in United’s first team, despite commenting on his stature: “Cleverley had no physique, was wiry as hell, but he was brave as a lion, had good feet and could score. I decided 'I'm going to play him'.”
In his first competitive game for United, he outshines Yaya Toure as United beat Manchester City to win the Community Shield at Wembley. He’s then called up for England by Fabio Capello where City players including Micah Richards, Joleon Lescott, Gareth Barry and Joe Hart chide him.
“They were saying that we didn’t batter them at Wembley, whereas I explained quite clearly that we did,” says Cleverley. “It was a great game, really exciting, and I’m sure it will be the same again when we play them in the league.” United lost the league game 6-1, but Cleverley didn’t play in that one.
He had started to feature more in United’s first team, including in an 8-2 win against Arsenal. Cleverley started four league games in the 2011/12 season, all wins.
“The results and performances lifted our confidence,” he told me. “We’re a group of young lads thinking, ‘Wow! This is a real achievement and after all those years of hard work we’re actually playing for Manchester United.’”
Outside of football, he went about his life unnoticed, playing snooker with friends.
“I was playing there recently when a member came up to me. He had no idea what I do for a living and said, ‘You’re pretty decent, you, do you fancy playing with the snooker team on a Tuesday night?’ I laughed, said thanks and told him that I had other commitments.”
He starts to get recognised more. Danny Welbeck, one of his close friends, reckons it’s people mistaking him for the Germany international Lukas Podolski.
“He’s a very clever player, the boy,” Ferguson said of Cleverley then. “Very intelligent. He’s mobile and a good finisher.”
But in the fourth league game, a disgusting tackle by Kevin Davies at Bolton on September 10 saw him go off injured. He wouldn’t play another 90 minutes in the league all season. Davies called him to apologise. Cleverley attracted this sort of treatment. In a game at Chelsea, Ferguson was adamant that Fernando Torres should have been sent off for a tackle on Cleverley.
He lost his place to Michael Carrick, Darren Fletcher and Paul Scholes. No shame in that, but he was flying when Davies did him.
And so to the ups and downs on a football career. Cleverley’s parents and their partners, plus his own partner, were a huge support to him. His father Andrew watched him play in 350 of his 379 professional games. That record was broken by no fans being allowed for some games during the Covid lockdowns.
Some things he gets right, others wrong. A personal website in the age before Instagram attracts 1.5 million followers – and a lot of abuse when he doesn’t perform well. He did it because sponsors encouraged him to and his personal sponsorship deal with Nike was one of the highest ever for a footballer below the age of 25.
Sponsors wanted some media profile, but Cleverley had already clashed with Ferguson about just that. After one trip away with England, Ferguson told him to rein in the number of interviews he was doing. Better to let his football do the talking, Ferguson suggested.
And he was right, but Ferguson was old school. It would be considered normal now. Today, young players are early adopters on social media.
After playing in the 2012 Olympic Games in London, Ferguson played Cleverley in 32 games in 2012/13, the last season United were champions of England. He’s rightly proud of that medal.
David Moyes played him 31 times in his 10 months at Old Trafford in 2013/14, but Cleverley wasn’t the only player to suffer after Ferguson departed. Ferguson pushed, encouraged, disciplined and nurtured his talents. The United team who had beat Arsenal 8-2 were De Gea; Smalling, Jones, Evans, Evra; Nani, Cleverley, Anderson, Young; Rooney, Welbeck. Incredible, really.
All the players from that young side were expected to enjoy long and fruitful careers at Old Trafford. Without Ferguson, it didn’t happen.
Criticism picked up with the Bradford-raised youngster one of the several scapegoats in an underperforming United side. He did an interview where he gave his side of the story and said he wasn’t always appreciated. Fair comment from him.
But the timing could have been better though, coming as it did after another shocking result for United. Cleverley got loads of abuse, most of it anonymous, for it. So much that his social media account was closed.
Cleverley was stung and the frustration built. On the rare occasion when his performances allowed him to let it out, such as when he scored against Aston Villa away, his release was cathartic. He celebrated passionately in front of the away end, he really wanted to succeed at United.
Mediocre performances in a mediocre United side saw Cleverley derided as not being good enough to play central midfield for the club. The man who once outclassed Toure in a Manchester derby looked short of confidence in Moyes' struggling side.
Louis van Gaal didn’t think he was good enough to play central midfield for Manchester United either. Cleverley, Anderson and Fletcher were replaced by Ander Herrera and Daley Blind instead.
Cleverley played 79 times for United before he moved to Aston Villa on loan for the 2014/15 season. He left on transfer deadline day, like Welbeck, who went to Arsenal. Welbeck had been at the club since he was eight, Cleverley since he was 11.
The day he left, Cleverley’s father sent me a photo of his son in his first day at United in 2000. A tiny boy, the red shirt dwarfed him.
I stayed in touch with Tom and his father. Got requests such as Tom asking if it was possible to get a copy of the programme from his debut in South Africa. Or a message from Andrew saying how proud he was as he set off to Wembley to watch his son play in an FA Cup final in 2015.
There is life away from the biggest clubs and Cleverley did well at Villa and was about to sign for them full time. In fact he was on the M6 to Birmingham to do so and to meet assistant manager Roy Keane when Everton came in with a far better offer. He moved to Goodison Park. Keane was furious.
Cleverley played for two seasons at Goodison, a graveyard for former United midfielders. Then he moved back to Watford, playing 146 games over seven seasons, five of them in the Premier League until his retirement last week at the age of 33 due to injuries. He’s very highly thought of at Watford and settled in the area with his young family.
Few players play 500 games for the top clubs in football. It briefly looked like Cleverley would, but he still enjoyed a fruitful career, most of it as a Premier League footballer. There are millions around the world who can only dream of that.
