Patrice Evra has described a transfer window that never was, revealing that Sir Alex Ferguson told him Manchester United were almost certain to sign both Cristiano Ronaldo and Gareth Bale ahead of the 2013\u201314 season. Evra said the information came directly from Ferguson and that the manager\u2019s sudden decision to step down came as a major surprise.<\/p>\n
Evra recalled meeting Ferguson one week before the retirement and said what he heard left him baffled. “I went to Ferguson\u2019s office, and he said, \u2018Patrice, 99 per cent, Cristiano Ronaldo is coming and I\u2019m going to bring Gareth Bale too. And those people who think I\u2019m going to retire? I\u2019m going to retire when I\u2019m maybe 100-years-old.\u2019 I couldn\u2019t understand [the retirement]. It was a big shock.”<\/p>\n
Those proposed moves did not materialise after a double change of manager and chief executive that summer. David Gill also left United that summer and Ed Woodward moved into the equivalent role, a transition that the club later found difficult to manage in transfer windows.<\/p>\n
The potential consequences were significant for both clubs. Ronaldo had been sold to Real Madrid in a world-record transfer in 2009, and a return to United in 2013 would have taken him away from the Santiago Bernab\u00e9u before his peak years. He later played a central role in Real Madrid\u2019s Champions League successes in 2015\u201316, 2016\u201317 and 2017\u201318 and was instrumental in La D\u00e9cima in 2013\u201314. Bale, who confirmed United interest in 2013 and that a bigger fee was offered, nevertheless maintained he always wanted Real Madrid and also contributed to those European triumphs.<\/p>\n
For United the missed rebuild mattered. Ferguson\u2019s squad in 2013 was ageing but remained strong, and there was no immediate mass exodus when he left. With senior defenders approaching the end of their careers, the planned rejuvenation might have sustained the team and even refreshed figures such as a 27-year-old Wayne Rooney. The club did see a steep decline, falling from Premier League champions to seventh within a year, and a late capture of Marouane Fellaini came to symbolise a loss of transfer efficiency. Evra\u2019s account to The Athletic underlines how close the club came to a very different summer of 2013.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Evra: Ferguson told him United were ’99 per cent’ to sign Ronaldo and Bale in the summer 2013 period<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11064,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[179,1163],"tags":[983,1047,1570],"class_list":["post-11065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-manchester-united","category-transfers","tag-agents","tag-champions-league","tag-gareth-bale"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11065\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}