It was some way to announce your arrival to the Premier League stage.
At the start of the 2013/14 season, promising West Brom forward Saido Berahino was beginning to establish himself in the Baggies first-team, turning heads with a League Cup hat-trick shortly before his Premier League debut.
But it was his winning strike in a 2-1 victory over Manchester United at Old Trafford in September 2013 that saw the 20-year-old catapulted to fame.
Berahino recalls his Old Trafford winner
“I was a childhood United supporter who loved Andy Cole and Dwight Yorke,” Berahino tells FourFourTwo when asked how it felt to score against the Red Devils.
“Scott Sinclair got injured in the 13th minute and I was the youngest on the bench, but Steve Clarke, our manager, told me to put my shin pads on. Luckily, we won there for the first time since 1978.
“It was only when I got home and watched Match of the Day back with my family that I thought, ‘Oh my God, that’s me scoring at Old Trafford.’ It was such an unbelievable and brilliant feeling.”
That goal was one of nine scored by Berahino in all competitions that season, as he established himself in the England U21s squad, even pipping Harry Kane to the 2014 Under-21 Player of the Year award.
A full England call-up came in November 2014, as his former West Brom boss Roy Hodgson turned to his former charge, although he did not feature.
The goals continued to flow in the 2014/15 season, as Berahino netted 20 times in all competitions, but this period of his career was blighted by racist chants.
“In my second season at West Brom, we were playing at Aston Villa,” he continues. “I was taking a corner and some fans were doing monkey chants at me. Back then, I didn’t know who to turn to apart from my mum.
“Cyrille Regis, a West Brom icon, came to see me at my house and told me about the racism he faced in the 1970s – bananas thrown at him, bullets sent in the post. Horrific.”
