Manchester United´s Welsh Wizard

Mark Hughes

Born and bred in Wrex­ham, Mark Hughes joined Manchester United from school and made his first appear­ance for the club when he came on as a sub­sti­tute in a 2–0 win against Port Vale in Octo­ber 1983. A lav­ishly gif­ted for­ward with a dynamic burst of pace, Hughes fin­ished as top scorer with 25 goals in 55 games two years later as well as help­ing Manchester United beat double chas­ing Ever­ton in the unfor­get­table FA Cup Final in 1985.

Famed for his fear­some shot, Mark Hughes was trans­ferred to Bar­celona for £2 mil­lion in the sum­mer of 1986 but he failed to impress and was sub­sequently loaned out to Bay­ern Munich. As a con­sequence, he returned to Manchester United for £1.8 mil­lion two years later and once again he proved to be a pro­lific goalscorer. The prod­igal son net­ted twice as his club drew 3–3 with Crys­tal Palace in the 1990 FA Cup Final before a bril­liant goal from Lee Mar­tin in the replay gave Alex Fer­guson his first major trophy at Old Traf­ford. To top it all, Hughes scored both goals for Manchester United against former employer Bar­celona when the club won the Cup Win­ners’ Cup the fol­low­ing year. He scored an aston­ish­ing 119 goals in 345 appear­ances for Manchester United before he joined forces with Chelsea in a £1.5 mil­lion deal in the sum­mer of 1995. The Welsh­man would later appear for a sev­eral league clubs before he announced his retire­ment in the sum­mer of 2002. An inter­na­tional for Wales, the lethal fin­isher pulled on the fam­ous red shirt on 72 occa­sions between 1984 and 1999. An impos­ing and power­ful ath­lete, the pure phys­ic­al­ity of Mark Hughes no doubt scared the liv­ing day­lights out of most of his oppon­ents dur­ing his career.

The Offi­cial Illus­trated His­tory of Manchester United