How Manchester United signed Andre Onana: Talks before CL final, Amsterdam meet, hard bargaining

When Andre Onana first heard Manchester United might want to sign him, the widespread belief inside and outside Old Trafford was that David de Gea would stay.

Talks on a new contract for De Gea, lasting several months, had finally reached an agreement. The 32-year-old went off for his holidays telling friends he would return to Carrington once back in England.

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Erik ten Hag ideally wanted a goalkeeper suited to his style, but given the need for a new striker and midfielder he had accepted during the spring that United’s summer budget, limited to around £100million net, would be channelled elsewhere.

At that stage, De Gea had shown some improvement in passing out from the back and was on course to win the Premier League Golden Glove for most clean sheets. Ten Hag accepted he could do “one last dance” with De Gea, as an insider put it.

But after the FA Cup final, where De Gea conceded from two long-range Ilkay Gundogan shots and had to kick deep to avoid Manchester City’s press, Ten Hag decided he could wait no longer to sign a No 1 fitting his strategy. The doubt that had nagged in the 3-0 defeat at Sevilla and again after the 1-0 loss at West Ham — occasions when De Gea mistakes cost his side — became impossible to ignore.

And so, in the days before the Champions League final between City and Inter Milan, Ten Hag started asking people about the availability of the goalkeeper he had worked with at Ajax.

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Yalcin Sarica, a senior agent at Wasserman Media Group, had originally been talking to Ten Hag about his client Denzel Dumfries. But then, during the phone call, Sarica brought up Onana, a player he had known since 2019 and was in the process of representing. Ten Hag was interested. The