He was considered as good as Giggs and better than Beckham. Instead of becoming the new George Best, Adrian Doherty preferred to make music.
A small pub in the East Green Village, Manhattan. It’s a mild summer evening, people are sitting outside or strolling under the lush tree tops that line the streets of New York’s bohemian district. There are 20 people in the pub, 30 people at most. While outside a gust of wind swirls the day’s thin layer of dust on the sidewalks and the sun slowly disappears behind the brick houses, inside a pale young man, barely out of his teens, takes his place on a bar stool. He has a guitar with him, nothing else. Hardly heard by the pub goers, he mumbles a few words in English with a strong Northern Irish touch. Then he closes his eyes, takes a deep breath and begins to play.
He sings songs by Bob Dylan, who, like himself, once played in the pubs of the neighborhood. His favorite song is called “All Along the Watchtowers”. “There must be some way out of here”, he sings, the few listeners stop speaking and listen to his powerful and yet somehow fragile voice. “There’s too much confusion,” he continues. Melancholy lines with which, far from home, he fills the stuffy pub air.
What nobody knows, this summer, 1992, in New York: A budding soccer star is sitting in front of them. One who plays for Manchester United. They’re all sure of who, with another talent in the youth of the Red Devils, forms a wing tong that will soon also cause a sensation at Old Trafford. His counterpart on the left wing is called Ryan Giggs, now a legend. The musician plays on the right and is called Adrian Doherty. Nobody knows his name today.
Adrian Doherty: “The best young player in 30 years”
Doherty was born in May 1973 in Strabane, Northern Ireland, a small community on the border with Ireland best known for being one of the centerpieces of the bloody Northern Ireland conflict due to its location. However, this did not affect his childhood. “According to his brother, sister and friends, they didn’t really care,” said Oliver Kay, author of a book on Doherty (“Forever Young”), in an interview with the42.ie. But what already emerged in these young days was the love of music and poetry. Bob Dylan was always with him in his youth and was the reason why Adrian really wanted to learn to play the guitar.
He showed great talent, soon wrote his own poems and played in a school band. But even more impressive were his performances on the green lawn. When he played soccer, he often did so intuitively. Then he turned his head off and was just out there, ready to give it all and have fun at the same time. His youth coach at Derry, Matt Bradley, says: “He’s the best young player I’ve ever seen in 30 years coaching and scouting in Ireland.” Bradley is also the one who quickly realizes that Doherty can achieve great things. He arranges him for Premier League clubs.
Arsenal are trying to sign him. When Manchester United knocked on the knock, the decision was easy. Because Doherty likes to watch the games of the Red Devils at home, which are by far the most popular club in Northern Ireland. After all, folk hero George Best played for United for eleven years. And that is exactly what you saw in Doherty. The potential to take a similar path. Because he wasn’t just talented, he was so brilliant that even today everyone raves when they talk about him.
Ryan Giggs on Adrian Doherty: “He was amazing”
“He was amazing,” says Ryan Giggs, who played with him when he was young Guardian. “Talk to Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes, the Nevilles; they’ll all tell you he’s the best player you’ve played with at this age,” says Brendan Rodgers, now Celtic coach, who is with Doherty in Northern Ireland U-national teams played together, in which the jewel was sometimes on the field with up to four years older teammates. And Gary Neville calls him “out of this world”.
Doherty was considered highly intelligent, unlike other eccentrics such as Martin Bengtsson, who struggled with depression as a talent at Inter Milan and ultimately tried to kill himself, but he was never an outsider or someone who loved his music Doom was. He played Bob Dylan songs for his teammates, who called him “Doc”, and often walked through the corridors of the United Academy with his guitar over his shoulder, when the wind of something these days, in the early 1990s Special blew. Because the now legendary “Class of 92” was about to emerge, the collection of talents who won everything in youth and later belonged to the best team in the world under the aegis of Sir Alex Ferguson.
David Beckham, Paul Scholes, Ryan Giggs, the Neville brothers Phil and Gary, Nicky Butt and Adrian Doherty. “Nobody talked about David Beckham, nobody talked about Paul Scholes, nobody talked about the Nevilles or Nicky Butt, everyone talked about Adrian Doherty and Ryan Wilson (now Giggs, editor’s note). It was clear that she was into it would make the first team, “says Kay. Both were lightning fast, technically brilliant, had a good eye, could hit buttery flanks and were so good at dribbling that they were sometimes both replaced in the B-youth when it was already 14-0.
