The Man United star who dribbled like Messi but tragedy struck when he was 26

The tragic death of Adrian Doherty didn't command too many column inches. The 26-year-old fell into a canal in The Hague, Netherlands and spent a month in a coma before slipping away on June 9, 2000.

The newspapers in England were far too preoccupied with England's build-up to Euro 2000. It was an England team featuring David Beckham, Paul Scholes and the Neville brothers - the ones who made it at Manchester United.

But for the cruelty of fate, Doherty would surely have stood alongside the Class of '92 in Old Trafford folklore.

Emerging at United just a year or two before those stars, Doherty was considered the superior of Ryan Giggs, who often tore down the opposite flank in their academy teams.

Those who watched the teenager in action described Doherty at 16 as 'the next George Best' and not only because he hailed from Northern Ireland.

His manager Alex Ferguson believed Doherty 'ticked all the boxes' to make it to the highest level and was on the brink of putting him in his team.

Even Giggs used to glance across the pitches of United's old training ground, The Cliff, in awe.

'As a player he was electric, his speed off the mark was frightening really,' said the Welshman, no slouch himself, to the BBC in 2016.

But Doherty was destined never to experience the success and acclaim experienced by Giggs, Beckham, Scholes and the incredible generation of talents who formed the backbone of United's 1990s and 2000s dominance.

Just days before Ferguson had intended to hand Doherty a senior debut - making him the club's youngest outfield player since legend Duncan Edwards - he suffered a severe knee injury during an 'A' team fixture with Carlisle United.

When Doherty's cruciate ligament finally healed, he just wasn't the same player and during the long and lonely rehabilitation, the more bohemian side to his character won out.

Not only was Doherty gifted with a football at his feet, he had musical talent too. Former team-mates recall him arriving at The Cliff in second-hand sweaters with a guitar slung over his shoulder.

He'd perform Bob Dylan tracks at the United Christmas party and spent his spare time writing poems rather than immersing himself in football.

'What I remember most was his personality and his intelligence. He loved to chat about music, books and poetry', recalled Brian McClair to The Guardian in 2014.

'He was a quiet boy, at ease in his own company, preferring to spend his free time engrossed in more artistic activities,' Ferguson told Oliver Kay, the football journalist who wrote the definitive Doherty tale, Forever Young.

We don't know whether Doherty would have coped with football's intense spotlight because after his injury blow, he drifted away from the game.

He tried to secure a record deal for his act McHillbilly and busked outside Manchester's Arndale Centre on Saturday afternoons.

Ferguson had offered him a five-year contract at 16 but Doherty wanted only three because football was just one of his passions.

After United, he flitted between jobs, working in a Preston chocolate factory, a hosiery company back home in Strabane and a Dutch furniture company in The Hague before his tragic accident.

Despite Kay's book and all the articles around it, Doherty will remain someone many United fans won't have heard of and there is a danger of mythologising his class.

But everyone who shared a pitch with Doherty is glowing in their appraisal.

'You have to be careful when you're making comparisons but he had that Messi-like ability to have the ball at his feet with a low centre of gravity and then just accelerate away with the speed of his feet and a change of direction,' Gary Neville said in Forever Young.

'He had the quickest feet. You know how Messi has that tight control? It's that style of play. He was out of this world, he really was. He was ideal for Manchester United.'

Team-mate Robbie Savage said: 'What a lovely boy - and I have to say - what a player. He was an unbelievable talent. It was just such a shame he got injured.'

Giggs spoke too about how 'brave' Doherty would 'just get up and demand the ball again' even if a much bigger centre-half had gone through the back of him.

Perhaps this hints at a mental resolve that would have enabled Doherty to make it to the pinnacle at Manchester United.

But, to borrow from his favourite singer, the answer to that question in this tragic tale is blowin' in the wind.