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Published 08:51 10 Nov 2017 GMT
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It was one of the few times that Sir Alex Ferguson was beaten to a top target of his as he had been a huge fan of Mikel's since he was a schoolboy, offering Mikel a month-long trial at Old Trafford in 2003.
It was during that trial that Mikel was protected by an unexpected guardian in the form of hard-nosed club captain Roy Keane.
"I trained with the first team. Roy Keane was my bodyguard," Mikel told the Sun.
"Paul Scholes and Nicky Butt always tried to kick me but couldn’t when Roy was there because he’d have killed them.
"Sir Alex called me Obi Wan (after the Star Wars character).
"He called me into his office one day and said: ‘Obi Wan, do you know what Keane, Scholes and all the senior players have told me? They said you have to sign that boy’.
"I couldn’t believe it. Here was I, a schoolkid from Africa, training with some of the best in the world."
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