Former Man Utd chief exec reveals why Ronaldinho transfer failed
Former Manchester United chief executive Peter Kenyon has revealed that Ronaldinho’s proposed move to Old Trafford collapsed due to concerns over the Brazilian’s entourage.
United were in the running to sign the Brazilian from Paris Saint-Germain in the summer of 2003 before Barcelona went on to complete a £21 million deal.
During his time at Barca, Ronaldinho won the Ballon d’Or and helped the club win two La Liga titles and the Champions League.
Speaking on Rio Ferdinand Presents, Kenyon revealed Sir Alex Ferguson was at the centre of negotiations but ultimately United pulled out of the running due to questions about Ronaldinho’s ‘environment’.
‘What actually happened was we did chase him hard, we did look at him hard,’ Kenyon said.
Asked if United had agreed a fee with PSG for Ronaldinho but then lowered that figure, Kenyon replied: ‘Absolutely wrong. Let’s kill the myth. Maybe a rumour but it’s not true.
‘Look, this was the same as any other transfer, Alex would be involved in it, critical decisions… does he want him? Why he wants him? Where he would play? Who would he replace? So Alex was involved all the way through.
‘Normally in these cases you’re dealing with the player and his agent. Here we’re dealing with the player, and his several agents and about 20 other people in the room.
‘Yes, he’s a great player, yes, he could play but suddenly we’re into a whole different thing.
‘Really our first Brazilian, injecting that sort of culture around training, you know, not normally on time, which is a massive thing, Brazilian health culture is different.
‘Fantastic players but there were all sorts of other things that started to get introduced into this and he was clearly coming with a lot of people.
‘It [United] is an institution, nobody got treated differently than the rest.’
Ferdinand added: ‘We signed loads of period over that period of time and loads of players came into the Premier League with their own physio, and it’s like at our club that was never happening, you couldn’t do that.’
Kenyon replied: ‘Correct, this started to become a bigger issue than the money. We sort of got an agreement with the club, we could’ve got an agreement with the player but it was all starting to get to the edges.
‘We came back and sort of said, ‘look, on balance, we don’t think this [will work]’.
‘David [Beckham] had just moved on and part of that was around the environment, not just playing.’