Liverpool tried to sign Ronaldo

Cristiano Ronaldo became a World Star at Manchester United, but it could so easily have been a Liverpool shirt draped on his shoulders - with the scousers first to make a bid for him. Sadly they couldn't match Ronaldo's wage demands (he must have been well paid even back then!)

Gerard Houllier, Liverpool's manager at the time, claimed he was close to getting Ronny. "I saw him in the Toulon Under-21 tournament and we went for him, but we had a wage scale and we weren’t paying the sort of salary he wanted,

"Then Manchester United played a friendly against Sporting Lisbon and all their boys said to Sir Alex Ferguson, 'You have to sign him'. But I agreed with not breaking the wage structure. I thought it would cause problems in our dressing room.

"I know some of the signings were not as sharp as they could have been. Maybe we would have won the title with Ronaldo, but we had Harry Kewell , who was outstanding at the time and was very hungry but got a bad injury. After that, he never had the same confidence, the same appetite."