Benni McCarthy

Benedict Saul McCarthy (born 12 November 1977) is a South African football coach, former player and singer who is a first-team coach at Manchester United.

He previously worked as head coach of South African Premier Division team AmaZulu.

A former forward, McCarthy is the South Africa national team's all-time top scorer with 31 goals.

At Porto, McCarthy played under the then newly appointed coach José Mourinho for an underperforming team that since winning the European Cup in 1987 had never been quite good enough to challenge for the top honours in Europe.

However, that would soon change.

However, McCarthy answered these critics by scoring his first goal of the campaign – a 94th-minute equaliser in a Premier League match against Middlesbrough.

In all competitions for Blackburn, McCarthy scored 52 goals in 140 matches.

Playing for Seven Stars, the 18-year-old McCarthy scored 1 goal in 29 matches in the 1995–96 season, followed by another 12 goals in 20 matches, which earned him a transfer to Cape Town Spurs, which two years later merged with Seven Stars to form Dutch club Ajax's feeder team, Ajax Cape Town.

In 1997, after an impressive showing at the African Youth Championship and FIFA World Youth Championship in Malaysia, he joined Ajax in the Eredivisie, where he scored nine goals and was crowned champion in his first season.

After a relatively successful 1998–99 season, he was sold to Spanish side Celta Vigo for a transfer fee reported to be over €6 million, at the time the most expensive transfer for a South African player.

Although regarded as one of the best African players at the time, McCarthy never established himself as a regular choice for Celta's manager, Víctor Fernández.

After two poor seasons at the Galician club, he was loaned to struggling Porto in the 2001–02 season, where he soon rediscovered the form that took him to Europe.

After representing Bafana Bafana in the 2002 African Nations Cup, where his national side was eliminated in the quarter-finals, McCarthy returned to Porto, where he became the main force behind the team's recovery.

He helped them to third place in the Primeira Liga and automatic qualification for the UEFA Cup by scoring an impressive 12 goals in 11 matches, but Porto's finances did not allow them to keep the player, despite the desire of both sides to continue.

In 2002–03, McCarthy therefore returned to Celta, where he spent much of his time on the substitutes' bench as a squad player as Porto captured the Taça de Portugal, the Portuguese League and the UEFA Cup.

He is also the only South African to have won the UEFA Champions League, doing so with Porto in 2003–04.

McCarthy was born in Cape Town and grew up in Hanover Park in the Cape Flats, an area notorious for its high unemployment rate and gang violence.

He is the son of Dudley and Dora McCarthy and has two brothers and a sister.

His older brother is Jerome McCarthy, a former professional footballer who played for Kaizer Chiefs and Manning Rangers, among other clubs, while his younger brother Mark played football at Franklin Pierce University in the United States.

McCarthy began playing at a local side called Young Pirates, which was managed by his uncles.

He then joined the youth structures of a local amateur club called Crusaders.

At age 17, he was signed by first division club Seven Stars.

When Porto sold striker Hélder Postiga to Tottenham Hotspur ahead of the 2003–04 season, Porto finally acquired McCarthy for a sum of €7.856 million, (later re-sold part of the rights to GestiFute and First Portuguese Football Players Fund.)

For the 2003–04 Primeira Liga season, he earned the Golden Boot award (with 20 goals in 23 matches) on the season's final matchday with a hat-trick, and was instrumental in Porto's run in the 2003–04 UEFA Champions League, which they won.

He scored two goals against Manchester United to defeat them in the second round.

On 25 July 2006, McCarthy flew out to England to undergo a medical and probable contract signing to join Blackburn Rovers.

Three days later, he signed a four-year contract with Blackburn for a £2.5 million transfer fee.

The move meant that Rovers regularly fielded a side that contained two South African Internationals, the other being Aaron Mokoena who joined the club the year previous.

After a disappointing performance in the side's 3–0 defeat to Portsmouth, McCarthy found the net on his debut at Ewood Park against Everton on 23 August 2006.

McCarthy further endeared himself to Rovers fans, scoring a goal on his European debut for the club in a 2–2 against Red Bull Salzburg in the UEFA Cup, and scoring another in the return leg.

He finished second top scorer in the Premier League in 2006–07 with 18 league goals, as well as 24 in all competitions.

The following season got off to a poor start for McCarthy when he was stretchered off in the Premier League opening day win against Middlesbrough.

McCarthy was out of action for a few weeks and found first team opportunities limited, largely because the form of new striking arrival Roque Santa Cruz.

Despite being limited to largely substitute appearances, McCarthy did find the net 11 times in all competitions.

In the 2008–09 season, McCarthy appeared to be out of favour with new manager Paul Ince, as the club's strike force was strengthened with the arrivals of Carlos Villanueva and Robbie Fowler to join the already established Roque Santa Cruz, Jason Roberts and Matt Derbyshire.

McCarthy completed a move to West Ham United for an undisclosed fee on transfer deadline day, 1 February 2010.

He made his Premier League debut for West Ham against Burnley at Turf Moor in a 2–1 defeat on 6 February 2010, where he sustained an injury which would keep him out for six weeks.

In February 2011, having played just 326 minutes of football, making only three starts and failing to score any goals for West Ham, McCarthy was omitted from West Ham's 25-man squad for the remainder of the 2010–11 season.

He was also offered a £1 million pay-off in exchange for terminating his contract prematurely.

He signed a two and a half-year contract that was due to run until the summer of 2012.