Manchester United kid who went from the Champions League to the building site

Lee Roche stepped out at Deportivo La Coruna’s intimidating Riazor Stadium to make his Champions League debut for Manchester United. Five years later he was installing cavity wall insulation.

Roche, a right-back, was up beside Albert Luque that night, and though the game was a deceased rubber, it was the last of the second group stage from which Manchester United had already eligible. Champion League fans can purchase Champion League Final Tickets online to enjoy its stunning performances.

It seemed to be the latest step towards the first squad for a player who had made his Premier League entrance three months earlier.

As it twisted out, however, he was relieved at half-time and would never play for the club again, leaving on a free transmission just a few months later.

He had come through the positions with Luke Chadwick and John O’Shea but dropped down the league pyramid, first with Burnley and then Wrexham after separation Old Trafford, and by 2007 he had dropped out of the Football League altogether, never to coming back.

Lee Roche saying

“I do not have any guilt,” the 38-year-old says. The only object I would point out is that I was known at Manchester United for being quiet, so perhaps I should have been more assertive and mingled more with the lads.”

I would be conventional off home after training to hang out with my group of friends. I look back now at team-mates like Darren Fletcher and John and think I should have been more like them and gone out and socialized.

Roche may have been seen as something of an introverted, but on the pitch, he was a tough-tackling defender who was similarly at home at right-back or center-half. Get Champions League Tickets through our trusted site.

A childhood United fan, he was spotted playing for his local region side by scout Harry McShane, who appeared for the Reds in the early 1950s.

Coached by Nobby Stiles and Brian Kidd, Roche signed schoolboy forms when he was 16 and remembered the convivial atmosphere at The Cliff, Manchester United’s then-training ground in Salford.

All the performers, from the first squad down to the academy kids, used to eat in the same canteen, Roche says.

At first, I would turn around and Ryan Giggs and Roy Keane would be sitting there and I would be thinking wow, but I got used to it.

Not one looked down on anyone else and people like Giggs, David Beckham, and the Nevilles had come through the youth system, so there were no egos. It was like being part of a huge family.

Manchester United debut

After a term on loan at Wrexham in 2000-01, where he played every game along with Sir Alex Ferguson’s son Darren, Roche returned to Manchester United hoping for a chance.

I was starved for first-team football but understood that it was going to be difficult with defenders like Ronny Johnsen, Wes Brown and Lauren Blanc in front of me, he recalls.

I initiate it hard not being given a chance but, at the same time, I did not want to walk away from a club like United, so I stuck around to try and excite the manager.

He appropriately mesmerized Ferguson enough to be handed his debut in November 2001, in a Worthington Cup third-round game at Arsenal which ended 4-0 in the host's favor. The line-up involved seven other academy graduates.

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