Six steps that brought a Lisbon street kid to the Theatre of Dreams

SOCCER/BEBE TRANSFER:Bebe's debut for Manchester United at Scunthorpe completed a remarkable – and revealing – tale of modern football business, writes DAVID CONN

IT WAS the most extraordinary signing of this or arguably any other summer, Manchester United splashing out €9 million on a player Alex Ferguson had never seen even on video, whose only competitive football matches had been played in Portugal’s third division. The battered life story which then emerged of the 20-year-old Tiago Manuel Dias Correia, nicknamed Bebe, added a rags-to-riches, Oliver Twist romance to a unique football rise.

Unlike European football’s customarily gilded youth of today, hothoused in academies, Bebe was abandoned by his parents as a young boy, looked after by his grandmother in a run-down area of Lisbon, then put into care at the age of 12. By court order, he was placed with a church-run residential home outside Lisbon, and there, without any family support, he had to make his way.

Barely educated, but powerful with a ball at his feet, Bebe began to play as a teenager with an amateur club, Loures, which had connections with the home. He graduated to the junior teams of a local third division club, Estrela da Amadora, and only last year, with six fellow residents of his care home, played for a Portuguese team in the European Street Football Festival in Bosnia – where he scored 40 goals in six matches.

Goncalo Reis

Goncalo Reis, a Fifa-registered football agent, recognised Bebe’s potential in the Estrela junior ranks, began to represent him officially, and negotiated the player’s first professional contract. Bebe broke into the first team only last summer, and played a single season in the Portuguese third division for Estrela, who were reported to have financial difficulties and were struggling to pay the relatively modest wage Reis negotiated for him.

Bebe still lived in the care home, Casa do Gaiato, while he was turning out for Estrela. Reis then concluded a deal for Bebe to graduate to the comparative big time: Vitoria de Guimaraes, a solid club in the Portuguese first division, took a gamble on the then 19-year-old’s unpolished potential, and signed him.

New contract at Vitoria

Bebe never played a competitive match for Vitoria before he was thrust into worldwide prominence by becoming Manchester United’s most improbable ever multi-million pound signing. Arriving in the summer and staying for just five weeks, Bebe played only six pre-season friendlies for Vitoria, before stories began to circulate he was attracting interest from some of Europe’s top clubs.

Vitoria then quickly put him on a second, improved contract, on an enhanced salary with a bigger buyout clause of €9 million. Within days, on August 11th, United signed Bebe, paying the full €9 million, stunning a football world which has heard Ferguson complain for the past two years that the transfer market is overpriced and attack other clubs for “kamikaze spending”.

Queiroz and Ferguson

As the public scrabbled about for background details on the new signing, Ferguson then admitted he had never seen Bebe play live or even watched him on video. In Ferguson’s 36 years as a manager, it was the first time he had signed a player without ever seeing him.

Bebe had, Ferguson said, been recommended by Carlos Queiroz, the assistant manager to Ferguson at Old Trafford for five years in total, in two stints from 2002-03 and 2004-08. Queiroz was this summer still working as Portugal’s coach, the post which he left Old Trafford for in July 2008. Ferguson said United’s scouts in Portugal had also vouched for Bebe’s potential. “Sometimes,” the United manager said, “you have to go on an instinct.”

Queiroz has since, a fortnight ago, been sacked as the Portugal coach, two days after the team were defeated 1-0 by Norway in a Euro 2012 qualifying match. Queiroz was already serving a six-month ban for allegedly disrupting drug testers during Portugal’s pre-World Cup training camp in May, an offence he continues to dispute.

Queiroz’s agent is the Lisbon-based Jorge Mendes, who, it has now been confirmed, acted for Bebe in the United transfer.

Mendes’s agency, Gestifute, did not respond to a question about whether it was within Queiroz’s remit as Portugal’s national team coach to be recommending Portuguese players to his former club.

Jorge Mendes

Jorge Mendes is a high-profile, lavishly-rewarded agent who appears to have almost cornered the market in star football names from Portugal. As well as Queiroz, he has represented Jose Mourinho for some time and a stellar list of Portuguese internationals, including Ricardo Carvalho, who was signed for Real Madrid by Mourinho last month. Mendes also acted for Cristiano Ronaldo, Nani and Anderson, when they moved to United.

It is not known when Mendes began to act for Bebe, or whether he represented him when the player was put on his second, improved deal at Vitoria with the €9 million buy-out clause which United paid so quickly afterwards. In the wake of the deal Gestifute put on their website the news of Bebe’s transfer to United, with a picture of Mendes and Bebe together. The story ran alongside one about Queiroz, also Mendes’s client, pledging to appeal his six-month ban at the Court for Arbitration in Sport in Lausanne.

Emilio Macedo, the president of Vitoria, was quoted formally thanking Mendes for his help, saying the agent “brings money into the country like an export”.

Reis complained then he had been cut out of involvement with Bebe , saying the player had written to terminate their agreement, which had some time left to run, and that Reis had received that letter only on August 13th, two days after Bebe had signed for United.

United have now confirmed that Mendes acted as Bebe’s own agent in the transfer, not for United or Vitoria. “Jorge Mendes is Bebe’s agent,” said United’s spokesman. He clarified that United did not employ an agent themselves on the deal. “We dealt with Bebe’s representative and the club.”

The Fifa rules

Reis declined to comment on the revelation that United had confirmed Mendes’s role in the transfer. Reis has claimed he still had time left on his contract with Bebe, who terminated it by letter, but Fifa regulations governing the conduct of agents do allow a player or agent to terminate their contracts early if they can show they have a legitimate legal reason for doing so.

Article 22 of the regulations prohibits an agent from contacting a player who has an “exclusive representation agreement” with another agent; such an approach would be classed as poaching.

Gestifute did not respond to a series of questions about the circumstances of the deal with Bebe and United, but it has previously denied any wrongdoing in relation to Reis.

Bebe at United

Bebe has yet to demonstrate he is worth €9 million being spent on him by a manager who never saw him play. Yet Ferguson has angrily dismissed reports that Bebe’s touch and control are not what United’s coaches would expect.

Doubts were expressed when Bebe was not selected for the reserve team to play Manchester City on August 24th, but Ferguson responded it was “vicious” to conclude Bebe had not been considered good enough.

“Bebe is on a programme doing endurance work because his fitness levels are not near the ones we are at,” Ferguson said.

“Other than that he has done well. Ability-wise, he is excellent. He is a terrific finisher. It is just the fitness levels he needs to get to.”

The journey for the most extraordinary signing of Ferguson’s career, from care home to Old Trafford in one summer, hit another, modest, landmark when he was introduced off the bench in United’s 5-2 victory over Scunthorpe in Wednesday night’s third round English League Cup tie.

Ferguson’s assistant Mike Phelan said afterwards: “The scoreline gave us the opportunity to give Bebe a little look at what Manchester United’s all about.

“I thought he responded very well.”

Bebe himself said pluckily that his signing will soon be seen as justified, promising: “I am going to be a brilliant player for Manchester United.”