Sir Alex Ferguson broke his No.1 transfer rule at Manchester United when he signed Bebe without ever watching him play.
The Scot always watched potential arrivals before making a move, but chose not to when he paid £7.4m to sign the forward. The Portuguese had been playing in the third tier in his homeland before Vitoria de Guimaraes signed him in 2010.
Bebe continued to impress in pre-season and, before playing a competitive game, United came in with a bid as they knew Benfica and Real Madrid were circling. Ferguson's assistant at the time, Carlos Queiroz, advised the Scot to sign the forward.
The legendary Scot has admitted: “I know Real Madrid were hovering and so were Benfica. It was one of those decisions that had to be made quickly.
"Sometimes you have to go on instinct and sometimes you have to trust your staff as well. This was a first for me, but we rate our scouting department very highly and our scout in Portugal was adamant we needed to do something.”
The move was so left-field that even Bebe himself thought people were having him on. The striker quickly had to get his head around the fact he was about to go from Portugal's third tier to the Premier League giants.
“It was a shock for me, too. For the week leading up to it, I thought the whole thing was a joke," he admitted. "I thought they were leading me on. Then I realised it was serious. I was surprised. I was playing in the third division in Portugal and all of a sudden one of the world’s biggest clubs wanted me? That’s not very normal.”
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Bebe's United debut would come in the September as the Red Devils took on Scunthorpe in the League Cup. Weeks later, against Wolves, he had his first goal in red, courtesy of a deflected shot. His bright start got even better as he notched in the Champions League shortly after.
That though was as good as it got. Bebe's form nosedived and he fell out of favour. He endured the embarrassment of being subbed on and then off by Ferguson. The player admits, with hindsight, that he didn't have the right mentality to succeed at United.
“I never took Manchester United seriously. I thought, ‘I’m here, I’m doing well and I don’t have to try hard every day. It was my fault. I was messing around too much," he confessed. “It’s hard to play at Old Trafford. There’s a lot of pressure to perform at the same level as some of the best players in the world. I couldn’t get to Scholes’ level overnight, nobody could. I basically went from playing on the street to the biggest team in England, it was impossible that I was going to click in the first year, I needed far longer to adapt.”
