Sadio Man\u00e9 has explained why he declined a move to Manchester United in 2015, opting to remain at Southampton for another season before completing a transfer to Liverpool in 2016. At Southampton he scored 10 goals in 30 Premier League appearances as the club finished seventh, their best placing in 25 years.<\/p>\n
Man\u00e9 says his primary concern was regular playing time in a United squad that already featured established attacking names. “I was talking to Van Gaal at that time. Rooney was there. And Di Mar\u00eda was there … and Depay was there. When they failed to get me, they bought [Anthony] Martial,” Man\u00e9 explained in a new video from Rio Ferdinand Presents on YouTube.<\/p>\n
He recalled a personal call from the manager and a candid conversation about where he would fit. “Van Gaal called me and he said, \u2018Man\u00e9, how are you? What are you doing?\u2019 He said, \u2018I want you to come to Manchester United.\u2019 Okay, now I\u2019m talking to my agent.<\/p>\n
“[Van Gaal said], \u2018We\u2019ll see what is the best, because I know you\u2019re a good player and you can help the team, and we can help you also to become a better player. And then I said, \u2018Okay, so my question: you have Depay, you have Rooney, you have Di Mar\u00eda, you have Van Persie … so where am I going to play?’ That was my question, because me, I want to play.<\/p>\n
“He said, \u2018I know your talent, you\u2019re good. But if you do good training, good impression, you will play. But we have another player which is also good.\u2019 I was not convinced about his explanation. But at the time, me, I was not ready, I can say. I was young. I still needed someone to help me more. And one or two more years to become what I want to be. Because I was still in Southampton, I was not consistent. And then we said, \u2018Okay, we\u2019ll see.\u2019”<\/p>\n
Man\u00e9 also revealed he held talks with Mauricio Pochettino and Tottenham Hotspur and felt “more convinced than the Man United project.” “Because Man U was too many … the problem was too many big players,” he said.<\/p>\n
A year later Liverpool signed Man\u00e9 for \u00a336 million ($47.1 million). He went on to win six trophies with the club, including the Premier League and the Champions League, and in 2022 was voted the second best player in the world in that year\u2019s Ballon d\u2019Or rankings.<\/p>\n
Van Gaal later listed Man\u00e9 among several players he had tried to sign while at United, underscoring the club’s transfer ambitions at the time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Man\u00e9 explains rejecting Manchester United in 2015 and choosing to remain at Southampton. to join LFC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4586,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,179,468,1163],"tags":[983,1064,1047],"class_list":["post-4587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","category-manchester-united","category-southampton","category-transfers","tag-agents","tag-ballon-dor-2","tag-champions-league"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4587","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=4587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4587\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}