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“Not many people can say he scored on his debut in the Champions League!” Mark Lynch jokes as he reflects on his career at Manchester United.
You may not have heard of it, and it really won’t matter if that’s the case. The 38-year-old is now retired and can count the number of times he has kicked a ball in one hand since he last played for Altrincham eight years ago.
Lynch has launched his own company, MRK5 Fitness since his time as a professional, but unlike many others, he doesn’t openly seek to talk about his time at Old Trafford and use it to build his own brand. The former right-back spent his childhood joining the United first team, not many can say it was a dream they managed to make come true.
Lynch’s opening line warning is that he remains the only United player to make a first-team appearance for the club and score a goal on his own, but he insists that it remains one of his best memories of his time at the club where he had supported everyone. his life.
United had already qualified for the next round of the Champions League in 2003 when Sir Alex Ferguson gave the defender his debut in a 2-0 away loss at Deportivo, and the unfortunate moment occurred. Lynch had done everything right when he challenged Albert Luque through Victor’s center, but the ball bounced off him past United goalkeeper Ricardo.
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“Good memories, all good memories,” Lynch told MEN Sport. “At the end of the day, not many players can say that they have scored in the Champions League, that’s how I see it!
“That was the only thing I wanted to do (debut). It was United before England, the club I had supported as a child and the club I had always seen. My heroes were the boys who played on that team and it was all I I always wanted.
“I haven’t seen the game many times, no more than twice, but I only have fond memories. The experience of being involved with the first team, the training session before the game, all about that. It’s a shame I scored the goal in own door, but it is not one of my negative memories of football.
“I played well in that game and the manager at the time gave me a new two-year contract behind. So he obviously saw something in me, which was incredible.”
While his own goal quirk might be a useful piece of pub quiz trivia, it wasn’t something that ended his career. A few weeks later, Lynch was happy to hit the bench for Real Madrid’s visit in the quarterfinals, but he didn’t hit the bench, while he was included in most provisional teams for the rest of the season.
Lynch was included as part of the team that traveled to the United States for the club’s preseason tour in 2003 where he was exposed to the club’s growing trademark that he loved so much.
The local boy was impressed by the large volume of fans who came to see the Premier League gold club and still fondly remember the benefits of being hosted by Nike on his Portland campus.
After the four-game tour from Seattle to Philadelphia, through Los Angeles and New Jersey, the United players were exhausted. Three weeks away they had been exhausted and there were still two more friendlies on either side of the Community Shield against Arsenal at Millennium Stadium: away at Sporting Lisbon and Stoke.
In Lisbon, United was the opponent of opening the new José Alvalade stadium ahead of next summer’s European Championship. The competition announced Sporting players individually as they lined up before kick-off and the featured name for those watching on MUTV was a winger by the name of Ronaldo.
United’s 2003-04 yearbook game summary begins: “This was the night United lost a game but found a player.” John O’Shea, who suffered from a jet lag, later joked about his random performance against Ronaldo, convinced that United would move for the 18-year-old sooner rather than later, and the Associated Press reported that ‘the Irishman, who He looked particularly tired, he came out a minute later to be replaced by Mark Lynch. ‘
The United players surrendered to Ronaldo on the flight back to Manchester and a week later the club announced a £ 12.24 million deal. Lynch played for 37 minutes against Ronaldo and admits that his natural talent was evident.
“It was a couple of levels above all the others,” Lynch recalls. “I don’t know why that was, but possibly because we had just been in the United States and had to go to Portugal when literally everyone wanted to go home.”
“At night I wanted to impact and show United what I could do. It produced a sizzling display on a really bad pitch. You could hardly control the ball, but it did.”
“I sat on the bench thinking ‘this guy has something here,’ but you keep thinking, will he continue if he is tackled hard? I remember catching him in the second half, I went down the shin, and oddly enough, they didn’t even make me a reservation for that. He bounced, put a cross and scored from there.
“He just took care of that and didn’t shy away from the physicality, it was incredible during that game and it was a bargain to get it for the price. It’s probably not a surprise that he’s become the player he has.”
A year later, Lynch ran the valiant risk of moving to Sunderland on a free transfer as he was looking to get on with his career and get regular play time under his belt, before the spells at Hull and Yeovil.
Injury issues bought Lynch into the Football League pyramid, though he enjoyed a productive period at Rotherham before moving to Stockport, where he had already begun planning his life after his retirement.
Lynch overcame the mental difficulties of fighting the game he dedicated his life to, but Lynch is now taking on a new challenge as he seeks to raise money for local mental health charity Manchester Mind.
Lynch, along with volunteers from her fitness groups, had planned to participate in a Three Peaks challenge this summer to raise money for a cause that is so close to her heart. However, due to government guidelines and social distancing rules, this can no longer happen, so you have had to be creative.
In addition to adapting their fitness training camps to work on an online platform, Lynch and his friends will participate in a ‘virtual’ Three Peaks challenge that will see them replicate the feat of their own homes by scaling the equivalent distance using anything you can find. around the house.
The fundraiser, which is supported by Box Football at Cheadle Hulme, was supposed to be a test of physical endurance before the shutdown, but now Lynch acknowledges that it will likely be further evidence of the group’s mental strength.
“The plan was to do the Three Peaks, but obviously I had to cancel it,” he says. “Too bad, but I thought we could still make it if we do it at home.”
“It will be difficult, but it will be a mental challenge more than anything. Generally, you can mark the summits as you go, but at home it is continuous and you never feel like you are going to get there, because you never physically get there.
“So why does he relate so well to Manchester Mind. Right now, the fact of being in good physical shape and mental health goes hand in hand, as being at home is a true charity to back up.”
To read more about the MRK5 LOCKDOWN Three Peaks Challenge, and to donate, please find more about: https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/mrk5athome3peakschallenge?fbclid=IwAR2DE9gJhOm0KhjnpM5i2Iu06v7mR-D_bpeLbucOxkLgBNJA1m1_WStae3Y.
You can sign up for one of Mark’s training camps at: https://goteamup.com/p/2219535-mrk5-fitness/.
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