Lingard, 32, insists he's enjoying his time in South Korea, where he is now playing regularly.
And he says when he looks back at his career, Lingard doesn't feel any sense of underachievement.
He told the Daily Mail: "100 per cent do not feel failure, I feel achievement.
"You just gotta look at my story from seven years old, a kid from Warrington making it all the way through. The percentages of that are like 0.2 per cent or something. I got chosen.
"You have to work hard. Go to digs and leave your family at 12 years old and move schools and be in a different environment. And I was the smallest. I was tiny. Sometimes I had to play down a year. So I've been through the mill, from a football point of view.
"I made my debut then got injured and was out for six months out and then came back. Was I going to play again for United? I didn’t know.
"A loan to Derby and others. At one point I had Newcastle on the table. I could have gone. I was debating it with myself.
"It's a fight. It's like a rollercoaster, especially being so young. And at the time you're just thinking: 'I've got to play football'.
"Fergie (Sir Alex Ferguson) always believed in me. That was the only thing really for me. Sir Alex knows football. That meant everything, you know. For him to say when I was young that by 22 or 23 I'd be in the first team was really something and obviously that pretty much happened to the day.
"At the time I just thought: 'Is he magic? What kind of sorcery is this?' You know what I mean?
"I am happy and satisfied. Scoring in cup finals, playing for my country, the World Cup, scoring at the World Cup. No one ever takes that away from me."