Not sure why I'm asking, because you're all fecking clueless (I include myself in that), but what do you reckon, are we getting this kid?
Thiago Alcantara | Signed for Bayern Munich
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I reckon, unless Tito takes him aside and backtracks on his word and does actually promise him he'll play whenever fit enough, I think he's ours, but like everyone here, it's just guess work based on Graham Hunter and other sources. Unless Thiago himself has a change of heart and doesn't fancy moving abroad, but surely he wouldn't have let it get this far if he didn't want it.
It's similar to the money Lucas Moura got when he went to PSG.
More relevant perhaps, Hazard is supposed to be on £180k week at Chelsea.
So, it's not out of step - it's just maybe a year earlier in his career than we would want to pay it, but that's just moaning for the sake of it. The transfer fee is low (by top talent standards) and if we believe he's good enough for the job we're offering then it's a fair price. In fact, I've now convinced myself that probably is what we've offered
More relevant perhaps, Hazard is supposed to be on £180k week at Chelsea.
So, it's not out of step - it's just maybe a year earlier in his career than we would want to pay it, but that's just moaning for the sake of it. The transfer fee is low (by top talent standards) and if we believe he's good enough for the job we're offering then it's a fair price. In fact, I've now convinced myself that probably is what we've offered
There's a thread that addresses this issue somewhere.
Ashley Young was rumoured to be on 120k a week. Compared to him Thiago is a legend already. Not sure if those rumours were accurate though.
I think the fact there has been next to no denial from either the player agent or father and nothing from Barcelona saying they want him to stay and he will be offered and new contract and playing team is quite promising.
I think maybe they're trying to imply we're desperate and he's greedy
So, what's going to happen when he stays at Barca? Mass suicides?
It'll be ok because we'll just introduce Ronaldo all by himself
I think a couple of months ago he may have got into this hoping for reassurance from Barca. I really don't think he got that, and if anything I'd say there have been some off the record briefings by Barca management that have been deliberately negative. There's some backtracking going on now, mostly because the fans like him and losing him for 18m is embarrassing - but unless he's got some real obsession about triumphing at Barca then he's leaving.
To us? I don't know. I've said right the way through the thread that there are other teams involved. I think that list is now down to us, Bayern Munch and someone with a forklift truck full of gold. This is where the personality issue comes in. I think he's serious about moving for playing time and glory and that he'll see United, Bayern, Madrid as sideways moves - and of those three I think we'll give him the best offer and the best guarantees about his role.
In other words, if he doesn't come, it won't be because of us, it'll be because of him.
hehe, some journo pulls a figure out of his arse and the wages debate begins.
Well I was just about old enough to remember the lob against Sunderland and crying at his retirement. My first hero.
I think there is a danger of judging the past by the present here. Rooney was so, so good as a youngster. At 20 he was better in some ways than he is now, and you would've bet your house on him becoming one of the best players in the world. There was never that guarantee with Ronaldo - I don't know anyone who thought it was an absolute certainty at the time. I think most people saw the potential, but there was a hell of a lot of frustration with him before he really kicked it up a notch. It was the sort of thing you simply did not see with Rooney, Messi and Fabregas; at 16/17/18, they were already looking more complete than players years older than them. Ronaldo was gifted but also an extremely annoying player at that age sometimes.
I'm not really criticising Ronaldo, because all I'm saying is that his development took a different trajectory from those three up there. They were extremely rare cases and had a footballing maturity that was way ahead of their time. No-one knew whether Ronaldo would put it all together, but with those three it was just a case of how far they could go. People have to remember that, at that time, a lot of people were more excited about the likes of Robben and even Lennon. Robben was actually a significantly better 20 year old than Ronaldo was.
I don't see why we care so much about wages. The club pay whatever they see fit.
Unless it's Ashley Young of course. We have every right to complain there.
Unless it's Ashley Young of course. We have every right to complain there.
I don't get why people come into threads like this just to sneer. Of course we are going to discuss what is written in the media about Manchester United, we are on a forum.
You're all working the tax out wrong. The Spanish press do tend to talk about after-tax figures when they discuss weekly salary, but like everyone else when they give a big annual number it's usual the club's outlay, not the player's eventual income. So the original 80,000/week estimates (or whatever it was, I haven't actually worked it out myself) were probably right.
And that, I think, would be a reasonable wage for Thiago.
And that, I think, would be a reasonable wage for Thiago.
I couldn't care less if they pay him £130,000 a week or give him a black sack full of Paul Scholes' ginger pubic hair, just get the lad signed.
Why are we believing this 130k story?! The tabloids never get these wages accurate at all.
Everyone seems to be putting him down as a cm... Is that where people see him playing for us or will he be more of a "behind the front man" player. I haven't seen too much of him to be honest.
Either/or really. He can do both, as long as we don't do an Anderson on him and try turn him into something he isn't.
That's not even the story tbf, so I guess redcafe is just as bad if not worse than the tabloids.
I wud not be surprised if we miss out on him. It is always the case with us. Hazard, Ozil, Moura the list goes on. We are too slow in negotiations, period.
He plays in CM at the U21 tourney, no idea where he plays in the midfield for Barca
That can't be serious
He certainly seems capable in either position, but IMO he will be part of a 2 man midfield with carrick, and kagawa / Rooney head of the triangle.
So what is he not, I've seen people mention xavi and iniesta who are totally different. If he can play the xavi quarterback role that would be great... Would need a lot of discipline though. For some reason I thought he was another silva type player?
I think he is just a versatile player, I'm sure he would be fine in an Iniesta style AM role too. The fact that he has played games as a deep CM is reassuring, completely different scenario to Anderson who never played CM whilst at Porto.
I'm sure we're not, but it does feel like that sometimes. If there's another club interested in a top player we're after then I never have that much confidence in use getting it done. Then again I'm proved wrong by the signings of Berbatov and Van Persie.
He's a midfielder. A full bona fide midfielder. He can sit deep in midfield and control play and he is equally as happy and effective in a more advanced role. He's not what I'd call a "Number 10" like Kagawa is though he has the talent to play it.
On to him looking for "assurances" from Barcelona. He signed his extension in 2011 which is when the €90m/18m was put in to assure him that he would be getting games. Now what sort of assurance can Barcelona give him that is more binding than a contract that sees them lose him for a joke sum? They've already broken that assurance once, why should he believe it would be any different in a year or twos time? This is exactly the thoughts I think he is having. He doesn't want to have a stop start bit part season next year and possibly the year after. He wants to be the main man in midfield so when he reaches 28 or 29 he has hundreds of games worth of experience under his belt.
Now it's all well and good for everyone to be telling him to look at Xavi as an example but at the age of 22 Xavi had 3 short of 200 appearances for Barcelona twice as many as Thiago has. Barcelona had already started to build the team around Xavi, he certainly didn't have a 24 year old Busquets and 26 year Fabregas to get ahead of let alone a 29 year old Iniesta and Xavi himself who will surely play for another 2 or 3 seasons.
That's often because rival clubs just throw a load of money at the agent and/or player. It's also why I - totally irrationally - don't ever consider Blackburn, City & Chelsea as true PL champions; any old twats can throw money at something until it becomes a success & it's no reflection on United if we're "beaten" by such rivals.
No, the articles bouncing around the Spanish press talk about 4.4m Euros net of tax - hence the comparisons with Xavi/Iniesta wages.
Like I said though there are plenty of political ulterior motives involved here, designed to make it sound like a purely mercenary move from him. The Daily Mail article that got repeated in a lot of the Spanish papers last week said we were offering £5m per year. The rest of the figures may just be the Spanish papers doing multiple Euro/£ conversions and rounding up each time.
In regards to the release clause, it's easy to laugh at Barcelona for not securing the player by playing him in enough games, but would you be happy if United started succumbing to player demands and writing such clauses into their contracts? If they did, would you expect the manager to pick teamsheets on the basis of contractual security?
That's what makes it easy to laugh at Barcelona. You can either laugh at the fact they didn't play him enough games to fit the contract or you can laugh at the fact they were stupid enough to allow a player to have that clause written into his contract. Either way it's not good business.
We just had the Pogba situation recently and I'm quite sure there were mixed views (though Thiago seems to be showing more 'respect' than Pogba). I'd say it varies on a case by case basis.
Yeah the whole notion seems fecked up and I suppose it's Barcelona's fault for bowing to it in the first place. I do hope this isn't a sign of things to come though.
IMO I don't think they took Thiago's threat of leaving seriously... they probably thought "pfft as if he'd want to leave us, we are the best club in the world. He'll come around".
Indeed, they've even overtaken Real in the arrogance stakes in the last few years.
I was saying it at the time. I had quite a heated argument with one of my friends after Euro 2004 where I predicted that Ronaldo would go onto be the best player in the world (dammit Messi so close) while Rooney will have a very good career but he's not got as much scope for improvement in terms of the natural progression you see in most young players. Rooney was a more effective player at 18, but Ronaldo had the bigger potential and was determined enough to work on his game. Sadly I also said that Ronaldo would move to Real Madrid once he'd got to the level he wanted to be at and that turned out true as well.
It was pretty obvious after 2004, when Ronaldo displaced Figo in the Portugal side that he'd be special. When we signed him he was clearly a potential WC talent but nowhere near as proven as Rooney or Thiago in the summers of them being linked to us.
While that is indeed arrogant, you can hardly blame them for taking such a point of view. There's an incredible romance and lure to that club at the moment and he is one of their products. Players make idle threats all the time when looking for something be it more money or more games, look at Rooney. They called his bluff and it just so happens that unlike Rooney, he wasn't bluffing. They've realised that now, perhaps too late.
Well, a bit less now after getting twatted by Bayern, but yes, you can't blame them too much for taking the stance they have.
People talk as if Barcelona gave him a low release clause for fun, they'll have given it to him as part of a negotiation designed to hang onto a top prospect.
Even at 20 he was well known to the scouts, and he's by all accounts intelligent enough to look at Xavi, Iniesta, Busquets, Macherano, Fabregas and even players like Sanchez and know that however the formation was arranged he was going to be a long way down the pecking order. I would guess the only way he was signing a contract was if he knew that he had a reasonable escape route.
Guardiola may have offered him a lot of reassurance, but we all know verbal contracts aren't worth the paper they aren't written on. So he (and his agents) did the practical thing.
A year later and nothing had changed except they threw Song into the rotation.
Patience is great but he's not a kid, he's been capped for Spain, he's played over 100 games for Barca. The surprise isn't that he's willing to use the clause, it's that he seemingly hesitated about doing it. Nothing stupid about Barcelona agreeing a contract clause to keep a player who might have left two years ago if they hadn't.
Even at 20 he was well known to the scouts, and he's by all accounts intelligent enough to look at Xavi, Iniesta, Busquets, Macherano, Fabregas and even players like Sanchez and know that however the formation was arranged he was going to be a long way down the pecking order. I would guess the only way he was signing a contract was if he knew that he had a reasonable escape route.
Guardiola may have offered him a lot of reassurance, but we all know verbal contracts aren't worth the paper they aren't written on. So he (and his agents) did the practical thing.
A year later and nothing had changed except they threw Song into the rotation.
Patience is great but he's not a kid, he's been capped for Spain, he's played over 100 games for Barca. The surprise isn't that he's willing to use the clause, it's that he seemingly hesitated about doing it. Nothing stupid about Barcelona agreeing a contract clause to keep a player who might have left two years ago if they hadn't.
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