Gareth Bale has reiterated that a transfer to Manchester United was never his intention in the summer of 2013, even though discussions took place with manager David Moyes. Speaking on the Stick to Football podcast, Bale confirmed that United\u2019s interest was real and financially significant.<\/p>\n
\u201cI did talk to United , yeah. They actually bid more than Real Madrid,\u201d he said. When asked whether he was ever going to join United that summer, Bale answered plainly: \u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n
The episode also recalled an episode from Jul. 17, 2013 when United\u2019s executive Ed Woodward left the club\u2019s preseason tour in Australia to conduct what was described as \u201curgent transfer business.\u201d United were also pursuing Cesc F\u00e0bregas at the time, but neither F\u00e0bregas nor Bale arrived at Old Trafford that window.<\/p>\n
Bale described his own discussions: \u201cI spoke with David Moyes. I didn\u2019t speak [with Ed Woodward], maybe my agent did. But my heart was set on Madrid anyway,\u201d and he explained a contractual understanding with Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy that affected any possible move. \u201cI had something in place with Daniel Levy, more of a gentleman\u2019s agreement, because he didn\u2019t want to sell me to a rival\u2014you don\u2019t want to strengthen another team,\u201d he said. \u201cSo if a team did come in [for me] from Spain, Italy, Germany, wherever, I could potentially go. If we didn\u2019t qualify for the Champions League, which we didn\u2019t, I was then able to go.\u201d<\/p>\n
United ultimately signed Marouane Fellaini from Everton at the end of the transfer window, paying $42.9 million (\u00a327.5 million) after allowing a lower release clause to expire in the hope it might make negotiations easier. Fellaini was the only new arrival into a squad described as ageing and in need of wider rejuvenation; the campaign finished with a seventh-place Premier League position, the club\u2019s worst in the Premier League era at that time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bale told Stick to Football he spoke with David Moyes but had his heart set on Real Madrid in 2013..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7612,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1083,1163],"tags":[983,1047],"class_list":["post-7613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-man-utd","category-transfers","tag-agents","tag-champions-league"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7613","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=7613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7613\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}