Swansea City boss Brendan Rodgers admits he could have been a Manchester United star!

For a few years in the late 1980s young Rodgers of Ballymena dreamed of joining them.

"I was a typical Irish youth player, identified at 13 or 14, who used to travel over there, not long after [Sir Alex] Ferguson was appointed. I recognised what a wonderful life it was," he told the Independent on Sunday.

A year older than Ryan Giggs, the first of the new generation that United's reinvented scouting network were signing up, Rodgers was not taken on, and moved south to Reading.

Does Sir Alex Ferguson remember him?

"I wouldn't have thought so. I wasn't good enough to be remembered. I joined Reading at 16 and was about 20 when I stopped playing, recognised I wasn't going to be the player I wanted to be, so I moved into coaching, devoting my life to that."