I was seen as a Man United party boy with a Rolls Royce and cowboy hat - but I only went out once

Wayne Rooney thrust the story back into the mainstream.

The Manchester United player who rocked up to a reserve game in a Rolls Royce waring cowboy hat. It's hard to imagine Sir Alex Ferguson biting his tongue. But this was Memphis Depay, doing things his own way and perhaps misunderstood.

"I've spoken about [when] he turned up to a reserve game once [trying] to be low key. He turned up in a Rolls Royce and a cowboy hat," said Rooney. "That was Memphis."

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Except maybe it wasn't. “I wasn’t really myself,” Depay reflected in an interview with The Times in 2018.

He made the move to United in 2015 and mustered just seven goals in 53 games, only two of them in the Premier League. Restricted to just 20 minutes of league football in the first 21 games of Jose Mourinho's tenure, the forward left for PSV Eindhoven.

He went to shine for Lyon and subsequently played for Barcelona and Atletico Madrid. He is currently spearheading the Netherlands attack at Euro 2024.

During his time at United he developed something of a reputation as a player whose ego was inflated and his professionalism away from Carrington lacking. He was brash and bling, and portrayed as a party boy. Not so according to the man himself.

“I wasn't really myself. I didn't change the way I was dressing or driving but it didn’t make me feel good, he said. "People think I think so much of myself but it was really the other way around. I was driving a nice car but not enjoying it. Feeling people don't like me, because they imagine I'm thinking I'm better than them. I was struggling with that.

"I remember some of the quotes about me, like 'party boy'. That’s just pure lies. I went out only once in one and a half years in Manchester and it wasn't even fun. I am not a party boy.

“The problem is people read then see you on the pitch and think 'this guy is taking the pee, goes to Manchester and wears No7, isn't playing well, just parties, he’s driving a Rolls Royce.' Nothing positive. And that's basically a guy I'm not. I had to learn to be deaf and blind.”

Depay joined United under countryman Louis Van Gaal but they had a mixed relationship, even if it has been repaired in recent times with the latter joking during the Qatar World Cup that they get on so well these days they now "kiss on the lips".

Mourinho then arrived at Old Trafford and it quickly became apparent that Depay would need to move on. Even if there was no issues between the pair.

“When I left, I said to Mourinho 'you will see me at the top.' He said ‘OK, I hope that and I hope we will buy you back one day.' I never had a bad relationship with him, "said Depay, adding on Van Gaal: “We didn’t fall out, it was just a misconnection with each other. As a team we didn't play great football and some things I don't understand.”

Depay now understands himself, he's 30 and leading the line for the Netherlands, who have shown enough to suggest they can contend at Euro 2024. Claim the trophy and Depay will almost certainly party.