Paul Scholes reveals 'awful' 80s pop legend trained with Man Utd players after invite from Sir Alex Ferguson
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Sir Alex Ferguson once invited pop legend Mick Hucknall to train with Manchester United – with the Simply Red star bringing his Miss World girlfriend along with him.
Hucknall, a huge United fan, has been pictured sitting alongside the legendary United manager watching games at Old Trafford over the years.
But the 80s legend once joined the first-team squad in training on the eve of a huge Champions League clash against Barcelona in 1994.
Former United midfielders Paul Scholes and Nicky Butt, part of the side that was thrashed 4-0 at the Camp Nou, recalled how Hucknall rocked up on the training pitch ahead of the game – blasted by Roy Keane for putting in a poor performance.
Speaking on the Football's Greatest podcast, Scholes said: 'I don’t know if you remember, years and years before when we played Barcelona, even Bobby Charlton trained with us one night. Remember Mick Hucknall trained with us too? We got beat 4-1 that night.'
Butt joked: 'Mick Hucknall should have played actually because we were all crap! He was awful. He didn’t look like a footballer, he had no co-ordination.
'He could sing really well maybe he should have stuck to that one. I remember Keano giving him a b******ing because he kept giving the ball away.'
Butt also revealed how Hucknall had arrived with Miss World on his arm earlier that day.
'I don’t know what her name was, but she was a good looking girl. She came to the pre-match, he brought her in,' Butt said.
'I don’t think the manager was too happy about that. Everyone’s attention went from the game.'
Scholes hilariously added: 'No wonder we got beat.'
Ferguson and Hucknall first met in the late 80s with the two forging a close friendship.
'Mick was probably the first pop star I met,’ Ferguson once recalled. ‘It was about 1987, when he played at the Old Trafford cricket ground, and he invited my wife and I backstage after the gig.
'He was more interested in Manchester United than I was in the gig – he kept asking about the team; you could see he was a fanatic.'
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