adminThat goal, at home to Aston Villa in April 2009, and the one that followed at Sunderland a week later helped United win the league title and shaped a teenage life.
At Stuttgart FC’s Mercedes Benz Arena this week, all that seems a long time ago. Tall and lean, Macheda is 21 now, with the early signs of a beard. ‘‘It makes me look like a grown-up,’’ he smiled.
In football terms, though, the Italian has certainly not matured.
To use the beloved racing parlance of his manager Sir Alex Ferguson, Macheda has not ‘‘trained on’’.
‘‘I am still happy about scoring those goals,’’ he told Sportsmail this week. I played for Manchester United. My dream came true.
‘‘I was only 17 when I made my debut, though, and when I scored those goals people expected me to become the new Wayne Rooney; the next big thing. How could I when I wasn’t even playing every game?
‘‘So that bit was not easy to cope with. When I look back, though, I am still happy about it. It was a fairy-tale.’’
Macheda is, we should remind ourselves, still a United player. The contract he signed in the wake of his teenage heroics runs until the summer of 2014. His future, though, will not be at Old Trafford and he is resigned to that.
He joined Stuttgart on loan in January, his third loan spell in the last two years after time at Sampdoria and QPR. He has not scored a league goal for any of those clubs and was given just a minute as a substitute in Stuttgart’s win at Frankfurt last weekend. In fact, Macheda’s statistics since those goals in 2009 are startling.
He has scored just three more goals and since the end of that 2008-09 season he has played just 419 minutes of English league football. His last league goal came two-and-a-half years ago, ironically against Aston Villa.
No wonder he has had to step backwards in an attempt to move forwards. ‘‘After Manchester it has been a struggle. I have had injuries and loan spells and they haven’t really worked,’’ he said.
‘‘But I am adapting now here at Stuttgart. That takes time. The important thing now is to find my place; get some playing time and develop as a player. Manchester United was more difficult than any club in the world because of the talent of the players there and because of the attention and the pressure. It wouldn’t make sense to go back and do what I have done for the last two years. Maybe in the future I could go back, but not now.’’
The events that led to Macheda’s remarkable contribution to Old Trafford folklore four years ago remain fresh in his mind. He still has the shirt he wore that day, if no Premier League medal. ‘You need 10 matches to qualify,’ he grinned ruefully.
‘‘So I didn’t get one. But I don’t really care about the medal because I think people will always remember me for that title. When he emerged from the bench to save his club’s title challenge, many at Old Trafford had simply never heard of him. The week before the boss came to me and told me there could be a chance for me to get on the bench if
I did well in a reserve game,’ Macheda recalled.
‘‘Can you imagine the excitement? Then I went and scored a hat-trick for the reserves. It was incredible really because for the first time I trained with the first team.
‘‘Then everything just happened, a totally magnificent experience. When I came on the field I wasn’t concentrating on the crowd and the moment. I just told myself that it was my first game and that I was playing with big stars and I had to go on the field and just help them.
‘‘I never thought at all that I would end up winning that game and then the next one. I still can’t believe it sometimes when I look back now.’’
Signed amid some rancour from Lazio when he was just 15, Macheda hated his early days in Manchester.
‘‘The first month was crazy and the first day was incredible,’’ he recalled. ‘‘They took me to this house to live with another couple of academy boys but I didn’t speak any English at all so I couldn’t talk to them.
‘‘I told the guy who brought me over to Manchester that I couldn’t go out and that he had to stay with me that night. I wanted to go back to Rome and if he hadn’t stayed I swear I would have run away.
‘‘I was happier the next day when we had lunch as I was allowed to sit with people like Cristiano Ronaldo and Ryan Giggs. That isn’t allowed in Italy. I realised then that I had to stay if I wanted a better future.’’
The presence of his parents soon helped, as did players such as Giggs and Rio Ferdinand. ‘‘They are good guys,’’ he said. ‘‘They care.’’
It was life after his two gala moments that proved more difficult to handle, though. Rumours in Manchester spoke of an over-inflated ego, while photographs of the young star surrounded by glamorous women on his Facebook site fitted the popular narrative of a young footballer who had quickly outgrown his boots.
Ferguson himself once spoke of his ‘‘cocky arrogance’’ but that was meant to be a compliment. More recently, he said that he was praying for an upturn in Macheda’s fortunes.
‘‘Those pictures with the girls were nothing, it was rubbish,’ said Macheda.
‘‘They were taken a long time before people even knew me and then when I scored the goals they suddenly came out. ‘I am not a guy who has to go out every weekend. I like to stay home and concentrate on the football. Of course a lot happened but that’s normal. I am not sure of the arrogance thing. I just had confidence in myself.
‘‘For a player that’s important, especially a striker. If you are not confident in front of goal then you will just never score. The people who know me and love me will tell you I am not arrogant. When it all happened at United everything did change from one day to another. But I tried not to change as a person and Ferguson always stuck very close to me. He banned me from doing interviews in the media, for example. He wanted to protect me and I think it worked.” — Mailonline.
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