Sometime in the middle of the 2000-01 season, Manchester United boss Sir Alex Ferguson took stock of his team and knew change was needed.  

United had won the Champions League in dramatic fashion in May 1999 by a hair to complete an unprecedented Treble, but had suffered in Europe ever since.

Ferguson had been tactically outfoxed by Vicente Del Bosque in the following season’s Champions League quarter-final. 

Del Bosque had set Real Madrid up in a 5-3-2 system. Tactically speaking, Madrid’s three-man midfield was outnumbered by United’s four. But in the shape of Fernando Redondo, Del Bosque had a weapon United simply didn’t have.

The second leg at Old Trafford will forever go down as the Redondo show. The Argentine produced a masterclass so good, so authoritative, that’s still remembered a quarter of a century on.

Back heel nutmeg to poor Henning Berg aside, it was Redondo’s commanding brilliance in dictating the tempo that stuck with Ferguson. United’s gung-ho approach might’ve worked in England, but it was fast becoming antiquated on the continent.

“What does he have in his boots? A magnet?” Ferguson famously said of Redondo’s elegant and dominating performance after the game at Old Trafford.

Further defeats against Anderlecht and PSV Eindhoven in the autumn of 2000 had also weighed on Ferguson’s mind: “We got battered on the ­counterattack by Anderlecht and PSV,” he said in 2009 when reflecting on that era. 

“Teams had worked us out quite easily. We were a complete 4-4-2 team, relying on the wide players to do a lot of defending for us and attack. We got strung out in those games, so we had to start thinking about playing three central midfielders to make sure we were not exposed like that again.”

In many ways, United’s triumph on that Wednesday evening in Barcelona was one final salute to the 4-4-2. The winds of change were blowing. 

Another quarter final exit in 2001, this time to Bayern Munich — who got revenge for their heartbreaking loss two years earlier — meant Ferguson was about reinvent United’s midfield.

And surveying the European landscape, the Scot identified Juan Sebastian Veron as the man to reshape his midfield around.

And it was easy to see why. Veron was in the form of his career at Lazio, a dynamic, ball-playing maestro of a midfielder who dictated the tempo of games and possessed an array of passing so astonishing you’d watch replays over and over again, marvelling at just how brilliant he was. 

At the turn of the millennium, Veron stood alongside Zinedine Zidane and Gaizka Mendieta as one of the best midfielders in Europe. United broke their transfer record to bring him to Old Trafford and Veron was seen as United’s Redondo, minus the luscious locks.

His subsequent struggles at United remain a sore spot for all concerned and discussions about why he failed, some 22 years after he departed, are still on-going. His quality was never in doubt, more a case of right player at the wrong time.

“Veron….had the best first touch I’e ever seen in football. Problem was for us that he was too advanced,” said former United midfielder Kieran Richardson, who played with Veron in his second year at Old Trafford.

Or, as Ferguson eloquently put it when journalists questioned the Argentine’s lack of form: “He’s a f***ing great player! Youse are f***ing idiots!”

A Rolls Royce of a midfielder, Veron who was just as good delicately rolling a 12-yard pass to the feet of a teammate as he was in launching a diagonal one 60 yards away with the outside of his foot. 

The Argentine’s repertoire of passing was extraordinary, capable of inside and outside of the foot zingers, short and long passes, through balls, he could execute the lot. His vision was second to none, he’d energy to burn and wasn’t afraid of putting in a tackle. He was almost the complete midfielder.

The late Sven-Goran Eriksson, who along with Carlo Ancelotti has arguably coached the greatest selection of players in the modern history of the game, liked Veron so much he bought him twice: bringing him to Italy initially from Boca Juniors in 1996 and then to the Eternal City three years later when in charge of Lazio.

“Technically, he had everything,” Eriksson told The Athletic in 2020. “The vision… he could put passes 40 metres, 50 metres, either side. Assists, goals; a clever, clever, clever football player.”

Veron had played briefly with Diego Maradona in the dying days of his second, less successful stint with Boca Juniors. After a mere 17 games with the Xeneizes, Sampdoria president Enrico Mantovani had seen enough and Eriksson gave the green light to the transfer, in the process breaking one of his rules in agreeing to sign a player based on the strength of a video.

Veron wouldn’t make him regret it.

Sampdoria and Parma: Early days

Only 21 years old, Veron arrived at Samp in a period where the glory years under Enrico’s father, the legendary Paolo Mantovani, were over. 

Even the minor successful period post-Mantovani Snr’s death in 1993, when the club finished third in 1994 while winning the Coppa Italia and reaching the Cup Winners’ Cup semi final a year later, was in the rearview mirror.

Yet Eriksson remained at the club with the mandate of bedding through new talent, with Veron being one of the best.

Still a youngster who didn’t understand Italian, Veron found adapting to Serie A difficult at first, but spoke to the likes of Hernan Crespo, Nestor Sensini and Gabriel Batistuta by phone in order to combat home sickness. “It was a different world for me then,” Veron would say of those early days. 

After a second season in Genoa it was clear Veron was destined for bigger things. It came in the shape of a transfer to Parma after the 1998 World Cup, with Veron already established at the heart of the Argentina midfield.

Veron only spent a single season in Emilia-Romagna, but it’s arguably the most iconic season in the Gialloblu’s history. 

Now sporting his trademark knee bandage, Veron fed Crespo and Enrico Chiesa in a workman-like midfield that contained Dino Baggio, Diego Fuser and Alain Boghossian. 

Utilised as a trequartista in Alberto Malesani’s diamond midfield, but essentially given the freedom to roam wherever he pleased, Veron was the lynchpin that knitted everything together.

While Baggio, Fuser and Boghossian brought industry and heart, Veron brought the class and invention.

He registered 14 assists in 42 games, yet had it not been for the wastefulness of his teammates, it would’ve been substantially more. 

It was at Parma that Veron slowly turned into a leader of teams, controlling games and dictating the tempo. Malesani led Parma to the 1999 Uefa Cup and Coppa Italia double, a side that’s gone down as one of the 1990s most-loved teams.

Veron wasn’t for hanging around, however. Eriksson came calling again and, after a dispute with Malesani, who wanted the Argentine to continue playing behind the strikers — whereas Veron wanted to be in the thick of the action — he left Parma for the capital.

Lazio: The crowning moment

“Veron was a genius,” said Eriksson in 2021. “He and [Roberto] Mancini were so alike, and they could do everything on the pitch. They were leaders.”

Veron, now 24, was entering the dressing room of a side that should’ve won the Scudetto the previous spring. Lazio fluffed their lines against Juventus and Roma in a critical seven days that essentially sent the title back to Milan for the fifth time in the decade.

Eriksson assured Lazio owner Sergio Cragnotti that with the arrival of Veron, the Scudetto would follow. 

He wasn’t wrong.

Lazio sold Christian Vieri to Inter for a world record fee of £32m and Veron, along with Diego Simeone, was brought in to bolster Eriksson’s midfield. 

“When he was at his best, he was a player who was undoubtedly among the best to play in his position” said Simeone. 

Anchored together in the centre of the field, it was his job to protect Veron and allow his more technically-gifted compatriot to wield his magic.

“If anyone touched him, they were touching my brother, something of mine… He’s the guy that, if I had to pick someone to win, I’d pick him,” the current Atletico Madrid manager added.

Yet while they worked on the pitch, they didn’t necessarily work off it.

“I sat by his side in the dressing room. We changed side by side. I didn’t say hi, nor did he. Our relationship was on the field,” remarked Simeone.

Veron’s influence was immediate.

His Lazio debut saw him produce a man of the match performance in the 1999 European Super Cup against future team United in Monaco. A Marcelo Salas goal earned Lazio a second European gong, but it was Veron who stole the show, controlling the game.

Four goals in his first six games in Serie A, including a stunning volley away to Udinese, set the tone. He was sensational in the classic 4-4 draw with Milan in October, showing the reigning champions that the Biancocelesti meant business once again. Against Verona, he scored directly from a corner in a 4-0 win.

While shorn of a world-class striker in Vieri Lazio, as is so often the case, improved as a team. The duo of Veron and Simeone were as good as anything in the division, while, up front, Marcelo Salas, Alen Boksic and Simone Inzaghi chipped in with goals.

Slugging it out with Carlo Ancelotti’s Juventus at the top of the table, the Argentine pair combined for a glancing Simeone header that handed Lazio a vital win in early April that kept them in the title race and reduced the gap to three points. 

“It was an incredible moment, a title-winning moment,” reflected Veron years later. It was his ninth assist of the season, and there wasn’t a more important one.

Lazio eventually clawed Juve back and overtook them on a chaotic and memorable final day of the season. Needing a win over Reggina in Rome and hoping the Bianconeri slipped up away to Perugia, Veron helped his team do their part, scoring a scorcher of a free-kick in a routine 3-0 win.

Juve’s game against Perugia had been delayed due to a biblical downpouring of rain (in mid-May, mind you). The game was eventually started amid Amazon rainforest conditions, and the home side somehow secured a 1-0 win thanks to a goal from Alessandro Calori.

Lazio were champions for the first time since 1974, and Veron had been the difference-maker. It was the crowning moment of his career.

Veron credits Eriksson — a father-figure — in addition to Mancini and Sinisa Mihajlovic, whom he both played with at Samp and described as “mentors”, as instrumental reasons why he immediately felt at home in the capital.

It’s likely the departure of two of the three influenced Veron’s own decision to leave Rome a year after the title. Eriksson had taken the England national team job in the middle of the 2000-01 campaign, while Mancini also departed for England and a brief stint with Leicester City before retiring.

The wheels were slowly falling off Cragnotti’s Lazio empire and Veron, along with Salas and Pavel Nedved, were sold in order to balance the books.

Man United: Right player, wrong time

Eriksson urged Veron to reject a move to Inter Milan in order to sign for United, and they made him the then most-expensive player in English football history. Veron admits the price tag didn’t bother him. 

In fact, Veron was good in England in the early going that Nicky Butt believed he’d never play for United again.

“I was suspended against Everton [in September 2001], he played and I sat there and I thought: ‘I’ll never play for United again, that’s me done, I’ll have to get a move’,” he said.

“He was the best player I’ve ever seen, except [Eric] Cantona. In training he was like something I’d never seen.”

This is a sentiment shared by many United players of the time. “One of the best players I’ve ever played with,” Rio Ferdinand told Vibe with Five.

“He’s one of a handful of players I’ve seen who makes the whole training ground stop and say, ‘did you see that?’.”

Such was Veron’s reputation by the summer of 2001 that Paul Scholes thought he might get dropped on a permanent basis, or leave.

“I loved him. I thought he was an unbelievable footballer from watching him at Lazio,” he said. “And when we signed him I thought ‘I might have to go now’.”

Yet after the bright start, in which he won Player of the Month in September of his first season, there was frustration from both club and player over his performances.

Veron’s admitted difficulty in adapting to the dynamics of the Premier League, the lack of preparation time between matches as having an effect on his game and hampering continuity. 

Ferguson shaped his system around Veron, but the old adage of ‘if it’s not broke, don’t fix it’ applies here. United still possessed one of the best midfield’s in Europe, and especially in England, where the 4-4-2 was still king.

Veron’s arrival represented a shift away from the classic four-man midfield model to a more fluid, European approach. In many ways, he was fighting against English football culture itself, with its ingrained belief in the 4-4-2, blood and thunder, hustle and bustle ideology.

Gary Neville believes United players also had a hard time adjusting to the change.

“Veron was coming into a very methodical 4-4-2 which had really good patterns of play which we all knew, and he was moving across those patterns trying to get the ball from the left-back when Scholes gets the ball from the left-back as an example,” he said.

“I think he came in with an interchanging position mindset into a team that had been set in the patterns.

“It was nothing to do with him as a player or as an individual. He was a beautiful player and belonged at the club. It was just a style change going on that was really difficult.”

Veron was, in many respects, a player ahead of his time in England. His penchant to roam also irritated Ferguson, who wrote in his autobiography: “He just played everywhere. He went wherever he liked. 

“If I managed him for 100 years, I wouldn’t know where to play him. He was the wild card, the joker.” Had he arrived later in the decade, when most clubs had shifted to a 4-3-3 or 4-2-3-1 formation in the Jose Mourinho/Rafa Benitez era, he likely would’ve been cherished.

A leader at Parma and Lazio, Veron could never have such a role at United, not with Neville, Scholes, David Beckham, Ryan Giggs and Roy Keane all present. Keane, who had to play alongside Veron the most, didn’t make his life easy and admitted as much in the years since.

“I was very hard on Seba and I was wrong. When he came, I was expecting miracles,” he confessed.

“When they didn’t happen, I was always homing in on him and I now know it takes time.”

Yet there were moments of brilliance:

The outrageous outside of the foot pass for Ole Gunnar Solskjaer against Deportivo La Coruna; a sumptuous 50-yard through ball for Beckham against Birmingham; A pass that dissected three players for Giggs against Blackburn. Free-kick goals against Bolton and West Ham, the sublime dink against Bayer Leverkusen.

Ferdinand recalls Veron scoring a Rabona from the halfway line in training so good it shut down the session.

In a 2003 pre-season friendly against Juventus in the US, Veron produced an outrageous outside of the foot dinked pass to Ruud van Nistelrooy, who swivelled and scored an equally as outrageous volley.

Days later he joined Chelsea. 

By 28, Veron’s reputation was never quite the same, but he remains one of the most-talented midfielders to grace Italian and English football in the past 30 years. A player who won titles everywhere he went, one who inspired awe not just from the opposition but his own teammates. 

A majestic, classy operator who could ping a ball in any direction and had control of a football so good Ferguson did eventually get his player with a magnet in his boots, but at the wrong time.

Yet in Serie A, his legacy remains firmly intact.