Hussein Yasser began playing football in Qatar before being recruited by Manchester United and City as a result of a deception.

What do Hussein Yasser, Andy Cole, Carlos Tévez, and Peter Schmeichel have in common? Anyone who can correctly respond to this query can now congratulate themselves on becoming an actual football expert. The answer for everyone else is: During their professional football careers, each of the players above had contracts with both Manchester United and Manchester City.

The similarities stop at this point. The genuine major hit was not given to Hussein Yasser, despite the first three having outstanding careers. And his route from Manchester to the city rivals was anything but typical. After all, the Qatari was signed by the Red Devils in the early 2000s after his agent, Rene Meulensteen, lied about his client’s citizenship.

Hussein Yasser was identified as a Brazilian by advisors.

Yasser, who is now 40, was a player for Al-Rayyan SC in 2002 when Manchester United first got in touch with him through his agent, who also served as Qatar’s head coach. To none other than Sir Alex Ferguson, more particularly. The videos of Yasser that Meulensteen showed Ferguson and the United officials were favourably received.

The issue is that Qatar has never been or is now not regarded as a top footballing nation. Meulensteen then dug extensively through his toolbox.

“He informed Manchester United right away that I was a young, promising Brazilian player. But Rene was a man who enjoyed making jokes. And I believe that saying that he has a technically adept Brazilian player rather than a player from Qatar was just more interesting “Yaser thought back.

In the end, it must have been known, or at least suspected, by United officials that they had scouted a Katari, but they still went for it. “I was able to conduct a tryout since I wanted to play in Europe. I gave it my all, and when it became clear that I had the talent to stick around, I was signed “The Qatari remembered what had happened in June and July of 2002.

So, at the age of just 19, he joined Manchester United. where he was permitted to remain for nearly a month.

Manchester United leased the young player to the Royal Antwerp training club in Belgium so that he could get match experience. Although Yasser was distant from Manchester, things were not going well for him at this station. “Manchester United didn’t pay any attention to us young players.

I was there for two years, and then I made the suggestion to be loaned to a bigger team. But United said no,” Yasser stated.

Return of Hussein Yasser to Manchester

Then, at age 21, the man made the decision to look for a new club. He spent six months at AEL Limassol in Cyprus, followed by six months at Al-Sadd SC in his native Qatar. After that, Yasser struck Manchester once more in August 2005. But this time, Manchester City offered him a contract.

Yasser remembered, “I was given another chance to audition, scored a goal in my first game, and was signed after three days. All of a sudden, he was in the gym alongside legends of the future like Andy Cole and Robbie Fowler. But for the Katari, that was “nothing new” because he had already played with Diego Forlan and Gary Neville at Manchester United.