Jose Mourinho Reveals the Reason Why Man Utd Missed Out on Bayern Signing Renato Sanches
ByScott Saunders
6 AUG 2016
Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho has revealed the club lost out on the signing of Renato Sanches this summer because he arrived at the club too late.
Bayern Munich won the race to sign the Portuguese wonderkid before Euro 2016, even while United were initially primed to be the ones to sign him within media quarters. United's appointment of Mourinho however dragged on a little too long, and according to the man himself, it meant that Bayern had their chance to steal in.
He told Portuguese channel
Sport TV: “I arrived late. I signed in May, we started talking a week before, but completely out of the process. If I had arrived earlier, I’d fight for him.
“Manchester United watched Renato many times and maybe I did it even more. In so much time at home, I watched many Benfica and Portuguese league games, I got to know the boy better with time.
“He’s in a big club, in a league where he’ll certainly be the champion. The club have players of very high level which belong to the structure, a little like Benfica.”
United are instead set to sign Juventus superstar Paul Pogba in a world record deal this weekend, and separate reports from
Manchester Evening News claim that Mourinho green-lit a move for Pogba upon arrival while vetoing a move for Miralem Pjanic in the process.
The Bosnia-Herzegovina midfielder signed for Juventus from domestic rivals Roma earlier this summer, and is expected to take Pogba's place in the Italian champions' midfield. He joined for £25m - a snip of the expected £112m sum United will pay for the Frenchman - but Mourinho is reported to have made a decision early on that Pogba was the man he wanted.
Had he been able to get Renato Sanches, however, you wonder if the Pogba deal would ever have taken place.