Frenkie de Jong has confirmed he weighed up a move to Manchester United in 2022, but ultimately decided to remain at Barcelona. The midfielder said Barcelona were willing to sell and United were prepared to buy, yet it was De Jong who halted the transfer.<\/p>\n
On the decision he told The Guardian: \u201cOf course, it\u2019s crossed your mind at times, like, \u2018O.K., what should I do?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Manchester United, recognizing the need for a deep-lying midfielder to make Erik ten Hag\u2019s system function, shifted their focus to Casemiro when a deal for De Jong did not materialize.<\/p>\n
Casemiro\u2019s time at Old Trafford has been mixed. He enjoyed an excellent debut season before encountering a loss of form and falling out of favour after the arrival of Ruben Amorim, whose 3-4-2-1 formation would likely have created the same issues for De Jong.<\/p>\n
Yet Casemiro later recovered his form and, the club have said, he has been among the primary reasons for United\u2019s resurgence in the second half of the current campaign.<\/p>\n
On his future, De Jong added: \u201cSo as long as I\u2019m good enough to be a starter here, to make an impact and Barcelona is at the level I want to play at\u2014with the sense that they\u2019ll be competing for the major trophies\u2014then there\u2019s no reason for me to go.\u201d<\/p>\n
Age and timing are an important contrast. Having recently celebrated his 34th birthday, Casemiro will leave Old Trafford this summer as he prepares to bring his career to a close, while De Jong is on the cusp of turning 29.<\/p>\n
The consequence of signing an older midfield anchor is clear: Manchester United must again search for a high-cost midfielder to occupy the base of their midfield.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
De Jong says he turned down Manchester United in 2022; United signed Casemiro, who will leave. This.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13577,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1017,1513],"tags":[1628],"class_list":["post-13578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-barcelona","category-man-utd-transfer-news","tag-frenkie-de-jong"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13578","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=13578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13578\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}