Sir Alex Ferguson has admitted that Man Utd did not know much about Bebe before they signed him.
United manager hoping gamble pays off
Sir Alex Ferguson has admitted that Manchester United did not know much about Bebe before they signed him but feels the Portuguese youngster could be a 'special' talent.
Bebe came on for his debut in the Carling Cup tie against Scunthorpe on Wednesday, playing the final 16 minutes of United's 5-2 victory.
His arrival at Old Trafford in August came as a surprise, as he had only joined Vitoria Guimaraes a few weeks earlier and Ferguson had declared that his business was done for the summer.
But the Red Devils manager decided to move for the 20-year-old after being alerted to his enormous potential by a club scout.
And after building up his fitness over the past month, Bebe will now hope that his cameo at Glanford Park marks the start of regular involvement with the first team.
"It was one of those instinctive things, you have a smell about something and you take it," Ferguson told
CNN.
Leap into the dark
"We have a scout in Portugal, where we asked him about this young player playing in the second division in Portugal.
"He'd only played three or four games and our scouts insisted that we should sign him.
"It was a bit of a leap into the dark really, because we hadn't seen him play.
"We sent one our scouts down... to see him play in the last game before we signed him and then he comes up and says there's something exceptional here, we're maybe seeing something really special, and so we took the gamble.
"So he's joined us but physically, he wasn't ready, hasn't done a proper pre-season, so the last few weeks since he's joined, we've been working on him physically."
