Ryan Giggs names ‘brilliant’ Man Utd player who didn’t reach his potential | Football

Ryan Giggs has bemoaned the fact ‘one of the best youth players’ he saw at Manchester United never reached his ‘brilliant’ potential.

Giggs was a member of the iconic ‘Class of 92’ which broke into the first team in the early 1990s and helped Manchester United dominate over the next two decades.

Former winger Giggs ended a quite staggering career with almost 1,000 appearances for United and a record-breaking 13 league titles.

On top of that Giggs lifted two Champions Leagues, four FA Cups and four League Cups before finally hanging up the boots in 2014.

Class of 92 contemporaries such as Paul Scholes, David Beckham and Gary Neville enjoyed similar success at Old Trafford but some highly-rated academy players failed to make the grade.

Ben Thornley was tipped as a future Manchester United star and even likened to all-time great George Best at the start of his career.

But a serious knee injury derailed Thornley’s career and meant by the time he left his boyhood club in 1998 he had only made 14 appearances for the first team.

Thorney, now an ambassador and pundit for Manchester United, had spells at Huddersfield Town and Aberdeen after leaving Old Trafford but was never the same player that impressed in his days at the academy.

Asked if there were any players he was surprised failed to realise their true potential at United, Giggs told Metro on behalf of BetSelect: ‘This is a bit different, but Ben Thornley was one of the best of our youth team.

‘It wasn’t about not reaching his potential, it was a horrific injury that he never recovered from.

How Sir Alex Ferguson poached Ben Thornley from Man City

‘Manchester United came calling while I was actually training in the evening with Manchester City. It was all about enjoyment for me right up until I was 14 or 15.

‘It was a bit sad as well because the amount of stuff I was doing – I was playing for school, I was playing for Salford Boys, I was playing for me county and I was picked to play for England around that time as well.

‘I was at Man City up until the point when Sir Alex and Brian Kidd actually turned up at my front door on Friday night.

‘They wanted to speak to my parents and convince them after they had sent scouts to see me play. When I played for Salford Boys, we were right next to the Cliff Training Ground. They regularly sent scouts as they did for Ryan (Giggs), who was a year older.

‘They convinced me that Manchester United was the place where I should be. With that, I told my dad to ring Man City to tell them that I no longer will be there.’

Ben Thornley speaking on the Mike Clegg YouTube channel

‘Ben was right-foot, left-foot. He actually was playing left wing in the Youth Cup final. I played up front. And I had known Ben since I was 11, when we played at Salford Boys.

‘You could see even then how much talent he had. He was brave. He took the ball, he took players on. He had the right attitude.

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‘The horrific injury he had really curtailed his career. He would have definitely gone on to be brilliant.’

Thornley suffered his devastating injury following a challenge by Blackburn Rovers defender Nicky Marker in a reserve match in 1994.

Manchester United legend Nobby Stiles felt Thorney was the ‘closest thing I’ve seen’ to George Best, while Beckham asserted in his autobiography that his former teammate ‘would have outdone us all’.

Discussing those comments in an interview with The Guardian, Thornley said: ‘Crazy, absolutely crazy.

‘There are very few footballers that have ever lived that would measure up to George Best and so to be compared to him, at whatever level, by somebody who has been a World Cup winner – well, you can’t ask for more than that.’

Scholes and Neville have also previously revealed their admiration for Thornley, with the former insisting he was a ‘step above all of us and the latter described him as an ‘outstanding talent’.

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