Man Utd created transfer problems by wanting ‘peanuts’ for Beckham as ‘tax’ complaints mount | OneFootball
England players Mason Mount and Harry Maguire react during the World Cup
Man Utd cannot value players properly, summarily fail to get much of anything for their Academy graduates and complain of a ‘tax’ they always end up paying.
The story goes that an ‘obsessed’ Jose Angel Sanchez, marketing director at Real Madrid, had to stifle his excited disbelief. That prior to a high-powered meeting with Peter Kenyon in Sardinia, he and Los Blancos president Florentino Perez had reluctantly agreed it would surely take upwards of €50m to get their man.
Yet the Man Utd chief executive sat across from him at the negotiating table made an opening gambit valuation of €35m for the most recognisable face on earth.
“Peanuts, they’re asking peanuts!” was the line Sanchez giddily relayed back to Perez in Madrid, only for his boss to suggest he try and drive a favourable fee down even further. Man Utd have struggled to shed a reputation of transfer incompetence in the two decades since.
It remains the fourth-biggest sale in the club’s history, the £24m received for David Beckham in 2003. Only Cristiano Ronaldo, Romelu Lukaku and Angel di Maria have been moved on for more by Old Trafford chiefs – and two of those were for less than Man Utd paid to sign them no more than two years before.
Completing a truly miserable top five most expensive departures in club history is Daniel James, one of the few examples of Man Utd seeing someone coming from a mile off instead of being the ones spotted lumbering in the distance.
It is almost impressive to have recouped no money whatsoever for David de Gea, Phil Jones, Ronaldo, Paul Pogba, Nemanja Matic, Juan Mata, Jesse Lingard and Edinson Cavani over the past year. Harry Maguire, priced at a ludicrous £50m and
Read on onefootball.com
