I played at Man Utd with Pogba and Lingard but Sir Alex Ferguson let me go – I got into my car and burst into tears
A FORMER Manchester United youngster has revealed how he got into his car and burst into tears after Sir Alex Ferguson released him.
Kenji Gorre, who is now 29, is playing for Qatari side Umm Salal and a Curacao international.
But, it could have been so different for Gorre who played at United with Paul Pogba and Jesse Lingard after receiving a two-year scholarship from the club when he was 16.
Gorre, who moved to England from Holland when he was five, spent ten years at United between 2002-2012 but ultimately wasn’t offered a contract by the club.
The left winger has opened up on the highs and lows of his time at United and revealed the conversation with Ferguson that left him in tears in his car.
Speaking on the ThreeSixtyTV series that was released in 2023, he said: ” My coach Paul McGuinness said to me, ‘The boss wants to speak to you’, and I was like ‘Wow, what’s going on here, I’m going into the office’.
“So I knocked on the door and Sir Alex says ‘Come on son, come in. Kenji, first of all I appreciate you and I appreciate you as a man. You’ve had an amazing ten years here and I can give you a contract right now, but I know that’s not going to do you any good’.
“And that’s when he started to share with me how there were a lot of guys in front of me. He started naming names like Andreas Pereira, Adnan Januzaj, Nani and all these guys who were ahead of me at that time.
“And then he said ‘I know that you’re not gonna get the game time that you deserve, and I know the quality that you’ve got. This is the right time for you to move on and I want to thank you for your ten years of being here’.”
Following his release Gorre admits that he was left questioning himself and whether he was good enough, felt he didn’t know who he was anymore and that he’d let everybody down.
He said: “I remember shaking his hand and saying thank you so much, and then I shut the door behind me.
“And I remember going downstairs, getting into my car and I just burst out crying. I just let it all out. I remember feeling like I’d let everyone down.
“I’ve let my parents down who have sacrificed their life for me, that’s how it felt. It was so heavy. And I can remember not knowing who I was anymore. What was I gonna tell my friends?
“They knew me as Kenji Gorre, the guy that played for Manchester United, and I’d been that guy from 6 years old. Now I’m 18 and I don’t know who I am.”
Gorre always had his heart set on United despite talks with other clubs.
He said: “My dad mentioned that he spoke to Chelsea, spoke to Arsenal, and they were interested in signing me. But for me, in my heart, I just loved Manchester United.
“I was really happy there and I was going to do everything in my power to stay. And I remember the likes of Jesse Lingard used to come down and play with us, Michael Keane used to come down and play with us. So for us younger guys, our chances were so limited.
“And I remember thinking, ‘Am I gonna get my scholar?’, and I remember when I went into the office with Brian McClair, my dad, my mum, and when we’re there they said ‘we want to offer you a scholarship’, and it was just such a good feeling. Now it’s serious.
“Now I feel like a real professional football player. It was a two-year scholarship that they offered me at the time, and when you’re 18 they’ll assess the situation which is where that will take you.”
Gorre revealed that his time at United was mixed during his two-year scholarship.
He said: ” In the beginning, you come in as a first year and they were signing players so it was difficult to get minutes, but it was also amazing because I was training every day with the world’s best players.
“Paul Pogba was there, Jesse Lingard was there, all these guys I was training with every single day. And it made me into a better player.
“When we were there on scholarship, we used to be there and experience the first team, have lunch with them, interact with them – it was a real eye-opener as well for us, because now we were really getting close to hitting the goals that we set ourselves as kids, to get the dream that we desired from such a young age.
“The training definitely used to be intense. I think the pressure then starts to double, it starts to get amplified. I could see there’s only a couple of months left here, and emotions would really kick in where I was nearly in tears, I wanted it so much.”
He ended up signing for Swansea on a two-year deal following an unsuccessful trial at Everton.
Gorre has since played for Swansea City, ADO Den Haag, Northampton Town, Nacional and Estoril, Boavista, and is now at Umm Salal.