Former Manchester United midfielder Kleberson has revealed all about his time at the club and admitted he just wasn't good enough when he signed to compete for a spot in the club's team.
Kleberson was signed in the summer of 2003 after winning the World Cup with Brazil, with manager Sir Alex Ferguson viewing him as a potential replacement to Juan Sebastian Veron, who joined Chelsea the same summer.
The 24-year-old joined Manchester United in a £6.7m deal from Atletico Paranaense but suffered a knee injury in his second game of the season which restricted him to make just 16 appearances in all competitions. His second season wasn't much better as he made just 14 appearances for the club before he was eventually sold to Turkish side Besiktas as United cut their losses.
But in an exclusive interview with official club website, the Brazilian admitted that the competition level was "too high" for where he was as a player at that point in his career.
"In the club at that time, we had players with great background – Paul Scholes, Nicky Butt, Ryan Giggs, Roy Keane – and they brought in young guys like me and Eric Djemba-Djemba to fight with those guys… it was not a fair fight, to be honest!
"Those guys knew how to play in the Premier League, they had grown up there. Me and Djemba-Djemba just had dreams of beating those guys, and they were very nice guys, very patient – saying that we were the future, trying to help us – but they were just too far ahead of us."
Kleberson's knee injury troubled him throughout the rest of his career and he admitted that it was a big issue for him at Old Trafford.
"One thing that I struggled with personally were the injuries I had, which were pushing me back. Then you lose time, you have to recover, then you have to get good physically, good technically. Then we had to come back and compete against Scholes, Butt, Giggs, Keane. Those guys had been in the team for many, many years, they knew what was required. As new guys, we came in like: 'Ok, let’s play my style', but it didn’t work out that way."
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