Open letter from Adnan Januzaj to all his curious fans

Adnan Januzaj – Manchester United’s newest starlet

Hello everyone. Thanks to all ah for the wonderful messages that came my way after the game last week. These words of encouragement will only help improve my performances even more. I promise to keep on performing well in the United shirt that I am proud to wear.

I may not have kissed the badge to show my dedication for the club, but you will have to excuse me as I find that practice quite unhygienic. Neither was I too keen to bang my chest as I have not beefed up that much yet to withstand violent, hard knocks to the area.

It was great that I became a social media sensation, though it was a shame that I was not trending on Twitter as the officials told me that most people really couldn’t spell my name correctly. I received word from Google that various combination of search strings were entered in the hope of finding some more information about me from ‘Belgium wonderkid’ to ’18 year old Belgium Adnaan’ and even ‘United boy young player Belgium Red Devils’.

So, please do note it down everyone. My name is spelt Adnan Januzaj. Regret the inconvenience caused.

Please use that name as typing ‘Belgian wonderkid’ would lead you to quite a few of my friends too such as Kevin De Bruyne and Marco van Ginkel, who are also wonderkids. Sadly Marco is now injured and likely to miss the rest of the season. Get well soon Marco!

My elder brother Marouane Fellaini, the one with the cool-afro, has also suffered an injury to his hand. He has a good head on his shoulders (no offence intended to Joe Hart) and is keen to start scoring for the club.

My associates tell me that there also was a lot of confusion about the pronunciation of my name; people had gotten confused with which letter to lay stress on. I don’t blame you, as by now you would have known that I come from a vastly mixed heritage.

But it is indeed a very nice name, let me assure you, that is pronounced ‘Ad nan’ ‘Ya noo sai’. Hope that helps.

Google also received a myriad requests asking about basically the same thing in different words – ‘background’, ‘heritage’, ‘ethnicity’, ‘region’, ‘born where’, etc.

I was born in Brussels, the capital of Belgium. I have lived there all my life and must say that I quite enjoyed living there. I played for Anderlecht for seven years before coming to England to join Manchester United at the age of 16.

My parents though are Kosovar-Albanians and as a result I happen to have a mixed bag heritage. You could call it a gift as not every person gets a chance to choose the country for which he/she wants to play!

Some bad people started a war in my native country due to which my parents were forced to leave and come to Europe. They fractured my already small country into smaller pieces and it is very unfortunate that the home nation of my parents is not even recognised by FIFA and the United Nations.

I just hope that they don’t fragment it even more, because then the media will say that another new nation now wants me to play for them!

Because of this background, I am eligible to represent Belgium as I was born there and have a Belgian passport. I can play for Albania because of my parents and also Serbia, because people are not giving importance to my real homeland of Kosovo.

Apparently I can also play for Croatia and Turkey (how that happened I don’t know) and after my performance I read that England manager Roy Hodgson was open to making me an England player. Here I was thinking that Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard along with Michael Carrick may still be playing at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.

It was also brought to my attention that there were quite a few people Googling in to try and find what religion I practiced.

To all those people I just wanted to say that it would be nice if the interest in me was restricted to my football. Does it really matter what religion I practice? The only thing it will lead to is sensationalism by media ultimately resulting in a lot of unnecessary controversy.

So, I hope and pray, that Google searches on my name in future will be on other topics such as Manchester United, Belgium (both are called Red Devils… now you know why I choose this team), birthday and even my girlfriend, which is okay.

Speaking of birthdays, did you know which famous son of Manchester United I share my birthday with? You can guess, he too was a very good winger, then turned forward and loved scoring lots of goals. Yes, it is Cristiano Ronaldo.

Also, other world-class footballers born on same day include Carlos Tevez and Brazilian Neymar, who I heard dives like a swan. Adnan also try a dive against Sunderland, but referee Chris Foy is a good man; he pardoned Adnan on juvenile grounds and didn’t show me a yellow card.

Also I think that after seeing senior teammate Ashley Young’s dives, the standard has been set very high and I think mine looked very amateur.

I must thank all the fans for all the support and outpouring of love that they have given me (manager David Moyes has told me I must be courteous) and the manager for giving me the chance to start a game (David Moyes plug).

Red Devils fans please don’t worry, I intend to follow in the footsteps of Cristiano Ronaldo and not Federico Macheda (no offence meant bro!).

Also, in case you were wondering how I wrote this article with not much knowledge of English, it was uncle Michael Carrick who wrote this for me.

Just like how only his passes reach other teammates on the football ground, I wanted this message to actually reach my fans.

I initially approached Jack Wilshere since he is in the same age group, but he is already caught up in enough trouble already. The smoke is yet to blow over for him!

Plus he does not like non-English people!

So much for now, I’m enjoying my time in England so far and having a time. Adnan very happy that proud Kosovar-Albanian parents of Belgian/Albanian/Kosovar/Croatian/Turkish/Serbian Adnan Januzaj are getting to see their son perform on TV.

Peace.

Disclaimer: This piece is a figment of imagination of the author and it should not be taken for real.