Quinton Fortune was never able to nail down a regular place at Manchester United, but the South African star will forever be grateful he just had the chance to play at Old Trafford.
The winger, now 45, spent seven years under Sir Alex Ferguson after signing for the newly crowned treble winners in 1999. In three of the next four campaigns that followed he appeared in a title winning team, but only in 2002/03 did he play enough games to be deemed worthy of a medal.
But Fortune's story runs deeper than that of a bit-part player at one of the world's biggest clubs. His £1.5 million move came via a stint at Atletico Madrid, but, more significantly, following a childhood where threats to his life were never far away.
“There were scary parts; the drugs, the gang fights, the shootings, the stabbings, the killings — it was right there, every day," Fortune, born and raised in Cape Town, told The Athletic last year. "From the moment you woke up, you were exposed to it. It is easy to fall into that trap but thank God for my grandma, my parents and my siblings, who took care of me and kept me in sport."
It was an upbringing that put the pressures of professional football into perspective. So much so, that a sudden increase in spotlight after moving to the Premier League from Spain, where he mostly confined to B team appearances, was viewed with more privilege than perturbation.
“I was then on the front of The Sun newspaper the next week being labelled as potentially the first million-pound kid," recalled Fortune. "That was a nice little bit of pressure for me!”
After his spell with United, brief stints at Bolton, Brescia, Tubize and Doncaster followed, amid 45 caps for South Africa and a starring role in their 2002 World Cup campaign. Two years previously he'd enjoyed perhaps his finest display in red, scoring twice against South Melbourne to salvage an otherwise poor World Club Championship campaign.
But the insight he had into the mentality that yielded such dominance under Ferguson never left him: “Good team spirit. Respect for each other," he replied, when he asked about the secrets of their unparalleled success in that era. "Authenticity in the team.
"I am not saying we held hands every day but the spirit of the team was very tight and the work ethic was like something I had never seen. When I arrived at the old training ground at The Cliff, I realised these guys won the treble with one training pitch. That was great because it reminds you how you don’t need everything provided if you have the spirit and work ethic..........."
That same ethic saw Fortune return as Under-23 assistant coach at United in 2019. A stint as a coach at Reading followed, before a move to the FA and PFA's joint England Elite Coach Programme to help support the country's youth teams. It's a role, that his background has prepared him well for.
