Meet Charlie McNeill: Manchester United academy's goalscoring phenomenon who swapped sky...

[ASFN Admin]

It is almost six months now since Charlie McNeill re-joined Manchester United from neighbours Manchester City. United paid an initial £675,000 rising to £1.4million to secure the prolific 17-year-old striker’s services in September, seven years after he first crossed the city divide, but they are not the only ones who have had to dig their hands deep into their pockets where McNeill is concerned. His prowess in front of goal has cost his doting grandfather, John, a small fortune in “bonus payments” down the years. McNeill would earn a pound for every goal he used to score for West End Boys, the junior club in Denton, Greater Manchester where he first came to the attention of a host of top-flight clubs, and a few miles from Droylsden where he grew up and still lives now - and later United. But when he scored seven goals in the first half of one game, John quickly realised he had entered into a very costly enterprise. At the end of every season, John would hand his grandson a big card that listed all his games and goals with a bundle of cash inside but, after being forced to cough up £145 one year, he resolved to change the terms. From then on, McNeill would net £5 for every hat-trick scored. The problem for John was it was not uncommon for Charlie to score two hat-tricks in a single game. “He earnt more off me dad from that than if he’d had a regular Saturday job!” McNeill’s father, Martin, joked this week amid roars of laughter. In reality, John McNeill was a lot more than just a piggy bank to Charlie. A former manager of Abbey Hey, a popular semi-professional club in the tough Manchester district of Gorton, and a lifelong United fan who was at Wembley to watch George Best inspire the club to victory over Benfica in the 1968 European Cup final, a decade after the horrors of Munich, it was John whom Charlie has to thank for being two-footed. Anyone who has watched the recent emergence of Mason Greenwood in United’s first team will recognise the value of that for a striker. “My dad stopped being in and around the football around the time Charlie was born so Charlie gave him a new lease of life,” Martin explains. “He used to take him to the park and make sure he kicked the ball with his left foot. He’d grab a ball, take him out and say, ‘Right, you’re not kicking it with your right foot’. That’s why Charlie is two-footed.” It was McNeill’s speed, and the power and accuracy of his shooting, that caught the attention of scouts yet Charlie’s first glimpse of life at a Premier League club was not at United or City - but Liverpool. He spent six months in their development centre, with Martin politely rejecting frequent requests from the majority of the north west’s biggest clubs for his son to come down to train with them, before the switch to United.

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