Sometimes every once in a while, a player comes along at a club and does something spectacular that adorns them to the fans for life. That player may not have many great moments at the club and may never really be a long-term success at the club..

..but that player will never be forgotten b the fans and if they’re lucky may still have their name chanted years after they have left the club. Football’s funny like that as sometimes a player can be at a club for the best part of a decade and win countless amounts of trophies but will not be ‘celebrated’ in the same way like players who may have only had 1-2 great moments in a smaller career in comparison at the club.

Diego Forlan was one of those players who United fans will always remember, despite the Uruguayan’s time at the club being ultimately one of disappointment and regret. Forlan was a player that people liked and appreciated because whatever you thought of him, he gave his all and that was something that fans were really fond of.

When Diego was signed in January 2002 from Argentine side Independiente , he was very much an unknown quantity. He was linked with a move to Steve McClaren’s Middlesbrough and there were rumours at the time that Sir Alex Ferguson would reach an agreement with his former assistant and offload Dwight Yorke to ‘Boro paving the way for Forlan to sign.

Whether that was true or not, nobody really knows but fans were excited by the mystique surrounding our new striker and had high hopes for him. Coming on against Bolton at the Reebok, Diego’s first touch in England was a back-heeled flick and in 14 minutes as a second-half substitute he looked impressive to say the least.

Sadly for Diego, due to a mixture of bad-luck, the fact the team played a certain way ‘give the ball to Ruud van Nistelrooy and he’ll score and some moments of his own misfortune, somehow Diego despite good opportunities failed to score a goal in his first season at the club. The media as you would imagine caught onto this and ridiculed him as ‘Forlorn’ with every passing game that went with him still looking to score his first United goal.

It must have only put more pressure on Diego’s shoulders and made every chance (even the odd simple one) that came his way even tougher to take. Even when he did do something magical like his effort away in the dying minutes of our Champions League semi-final second leg against Bayer Leverkusen (which would’ve been one of the club’s greatest European goals), he was denied by a near impossible-to-repeat clearance of the line by the German side’s Diego Placente (which can be seen after 35 seconds in the video below)

That moment was one that I won’t forget and had that shot gone in, Diego not would have been ‘the’ man who would’ve got us through to the 2002 Champions League final against Real Madrid at Glasgow which was a final that Sir Alex Ferguson desperately wanted to get to. Who knows we might have toppled that great side that featured Zinedine Zidane, Raul, Figo and Roberto Carlos, who knows?

Alas, it wasn’t to be and we had to wait until the following season, into Diego’s 27th game for the club until he finally scored his first goal. It didn’t matter that it came in the penalty spot, in the last kick of a Champions League tie against Israeli outfit Maccabi Haifa. All that mattered was that our blonde-haired Uruguayan had finally scored. 

Now he had to go and score his second goal for the club, which arrived 8 games later at home to Aston Villa. His third goal came the following week in the Premier League with an outstanding strike at home to Southampton which won United the game late on. He celebrated in style taking of his shirt and comically struggled to get the shirt back on as the game restarted, culminating in him winning the ball of James Beattie whilst holding his shit tightly in his hand.

It was comical and somehow odd, but it just made the fans love and appreciate Diego even more before his crowning moment in a United shirt came. Few will ever forget his two goals against Liverpool at Anfield which won us the game. Yes they came about due to mistakes made by Jerzey Dudek, but it was only right really that he got a lucky break for once and he was in the right place with his goals to score, which you can never take away from him.

The goals kept coming and with every strike he was looking a more confident player. His final goal of the 2002/03 season arguably was more important than his two at Anfield as he incredibly stuck a first time shot past Chelsea at Old Trafford in injury time that won the game. It was a win that turned the pressure tighter on Arsenal and went some way in helping us overcome Arsene Wenger’s side in that years title race.

The following season, Diego had to wait unitl October to get on the scoresheet again. But once he did he had arguably the richest vein of form of his Old Trafford career scoring 7 times in 6 weeks, including two fantastic strikes against Aston Villa and an acrobatic volley at home to Rangers in the Champions League.

Fans by now were convicned that he was finally now going to become the confident striker they wanted him to be. Alas it wasn’t to be as he only scored one more goal for us – a tap-in away to Northampton in the FA Cup – before being sold after United’s opening-day defeat to Chelsea at the start of the 2004/2005 season to Villarreal for a fee believed to have been around £2m.

In Spain he immediately was a hit and was La Liga’s top goal-scorer in his first season, becoming a key part in the Yellow Submarines side that reached the Champions League semi-finals. After three seasons he left Villarreal to join Atletico Madrid who he scored a staggering 96 goals for in 195 appearances, with arguably the two most important of those coming against Fulham in the 2010 Europa League final, which Madrid went onto win.

His form for Uruguay during the last couple of years has been exceptional and he won the ‘Golden Ball’ award at last year’s World Cup in South Africa due to his outstanding form there which helped his country reach the semi-finals where they narrowly lost to Holland.

Whilst his last season in Spain was a frustrating one, he still remains a valuable commodity and was signed by Inter Milan last month on a two-year deal which will be a new challenge for him and probably the last ‘big’ move of his career as he will be 34 when his contract runs out.

It’s a credit to Diego how well the last 7 years of his career have been as despite the flashes of brilliance that we saw whilst he was at United, few fans would have expected him to have become the house-hold name that he is across Europe. In many ways Diego came to United at the wrong time of his career and perhaps would have done better had he had experience in Europe beforehand.

The quality as we have seen was always there, it was just a matter of him starting more games as he only started 37 games for the club. He might have revelled playing alongside Wayne Rooney in 2004/2005 and would have been a good option for us to have when van Nistelrooy was injured that season.

In the end though, perhaps it was always destined to be a short but memorable career at Old Trafford for him. He may have only scored 17 goals for the club (which you can see in the video below) but he will always be remembered as the man who ‘came from Uruguay and made the Scousers cry’ and in many aspects he was a cult-hero whose goals meant more to fans because we had waited so long for them to arrive. 

By Adam Dennehey @ADennehey87