Manchester United signed Tim Howard from MetroStars in 2003 to replace Fabian Barthez. The American shot-stopper could have gotten off to a better start however.
When Howard made the trip over from America to sign his contract, he, unfortunately, chose to don a light blue suit - the colours of United's bitter rivals Manchester City. Of course, stood there shaking the hand of new manager Sir Alex Ferguson in such an outfit would have risked angering the manager.
Howard spoke about the incident on former United team-mate Ben Foster's 'Fozcast' podcast on YouTube. He explained how it came about and also how he instantly realised his mistake.
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He said: "This is how young and dumb and innocent I was. I'm playing for the MetroStars, I'm in Boston, we're playing the [New England] Revolution and I know that's my last game and in the days to come I'm going to travel to Manchester to sign.
"So I thought: 'right, I'm going to go to [department store] Macy's and get myself a nice shirt and tie combination to go with this big baggy suit that I have, it's going to be great'. So I get this nice light blue shirt, and a tie with beautiful diagonal navy blue, white and light blue stripes, and I've thought 'nailed it'.
"I've turned up and someone told me a couple of days later 'those are Manchester City colours, you know'. So I've signed for Man Utd, I've got the scarf and I'm shaking hands with Alex Ferguson, and I'm wearing City colours."
Luckily, this event did not derail the career of the 121-cap USA international keeper. He went on feature 77 times for United, however, after a number of high-profile mistakes he was loaned and then sold to Everton, where he went on to make over 400 appearances.
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