Manchester United’s midfield could have looked very different last season, with Adrien Rabiot revealing that he turned down the opportunity to move to Old Trafford.
The French midfielder was a free agent last year and with Erik ten Hag in need of fresh legs in the middle of the park the Red Devils were linked with a move that made a lot of sense on paper.
Rabiot ultimately signed for Marseille, who secured Champions League football next season after coming second in Ligue 1, vindicating the 30-year-old’s decision not to join United who finished in 15th place in the Premier League.
Speaking to The Athletic Rabiot explained that he was “reticent” about joining the Red Devils, whose approach last summer was not their first attempt at bringing him onboard.
He said: “[A move to United] really could have happened two years ago, when I was coming to the end of my contract at Juventus and I finally decided to extend by a year. We had great talks, and there were written offers. But in the end, it didn’t happen.
“Last year as well, when I was free, they came back in again. I had good talks with them again. But it’s true that it was a bit tricky.
“The situation they’re in at the moment… I felt a bit of reticence about whether United were going to be able to go on and achieve great things. Because they’re in a bit of a hole at the moment.”
It seems that he was genuinely tempted, though, given his subsequent comment that “English football is very attractive”.
This just illustrates the scale of United’s dysfunction, with players who know what life is like at the top level – Rabiot won big with both Paris Saint-Germain and Juventus – choosing to move elsewhere.
Indeed, the facets of the Premier League which Rabiot admires the most are precisely those which laid the Red Devils low last season.
He said: “Everyone knows that it’s the best league and the football it produces is a spectacle every weekend. There are lots of very good teams, and the league is uncertain.
“You know that the team in 18th place is capable of beating the team in first or second place. At the start of the season, you really don’t know who’s going to win [the league] and who’s going to get into Europe. It was really tight right until the end.
“And then there are new teams that emerge every year, which makes it a really top league. So yes, I’ve always got an eye on the Premier League.”
Ultimately United signed Manuel Ugarte from PSG for £42m, rising to over £50m with add-ons, to address the problems in Ten Hag’s engine room.
The Uruguayan took time to settle in England and by the time he started finding some form it was too late to save the Dutchman, who was replaced by Ruben Amorim.
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Joe Ponting
Joe has spent more than half his life writing about football and all of it following United. As a child he told a doctor his name was ‘Paul Scholes’, but could never pick a pass like him no matter how much he tried.
