So you don't know, thanks for the confirmation. For the record, the van de Beek deal was silent on our end. There were rumblings of interest back in March from Dutch sources, then radio silence for months, the next time we heard his name he'd already signed for us. We're very capable of keeping things under wraps. Romano has said we're long time admirers of Upamecano. Plenty of clubs made an approach for him this summer, but he was adamant he wanted to remain at Liepzig for another year. Liepzig will likely be challenging for the title in Germany by January, I'd be surprised if they entertained any offers for Upamecano, immediate or future, to avoid distractions.
We've done so many deals and you decided to go with one example of VDB. Do you know why we got the deal done so quickly?
1. VDB always wanted to leave for Real Madrid who had agreed terms with Ajax and VDB (Before Covid) and with Real facing financial issues, they retracted their statement. He was gonna be a fringe player anyway.
2. VDB had no other takers in the market and with the Eredivisie be called off, Ajax despite winning made a loss and they had to recoup that money and they've tried to do so with the transfers of (VDB, Sergino Dest and one other player)
3. Most important reason was that Van Der Sar is the CEO and with him being an ex-United player, he helped broker the deal quickly.
So United are NOT capable. I repeat NOT capable of doing things quickly. There were multiple factors that played into getting this done quickly. For every deal that United have done quickly, there are probably 5 deals that they have taken the entire window or have fallen through (Maguire, AWB, Bruno, and then you have Sancho and Haaland which didn't even materialize).
Romano expressed that we are long time admirers of Upamecano... so what? He's mentioned that about a lot of players. That does not mean we have put in a transfer fee to RB Leipzig. Showing interest and being admirers does not mean much. The United scouts look at thousands of players but we barely buy 1 or 2 each year.
Lastly, I did not say that we get him into the team in January but rather buy him now so that he starts with us next summer instead of waiting for this 36m clause to become active and then for all the major clubs to circle him like vultures. If the United board were smart enough, they would pay Leipzig 5m extra and let him play the entire season and that way, Leipzig gets more than what his release clause specifies.