Football
ESPN staff 9y

Manchester United's inexperience undid David De Gea deal - Perez

Florentino Perez believes Manchester United showed a lack of experience in the failed David De Gea deal and admitted he didn't know what the future held for bringing the Spaniard to Real Madrid one day.

On Monday, reports surfaced that the two clubs had agreed a £29 million fee for De Gea, but the move stalled out at the last minute as the necessary paperwork did not arrive to the Spanish league office in time.

The Real president called the whole situation a shame, in a story on El Larguero, adding that while he didn't think United negotiated in bad faith, the Premier League club's last-minute attempts at negotiating were ultimately the downfall of the deal.

"At 1:30 [Spanish local time], we did the transfer contract between the clubs of both the players and we sent them. They took eight hours to return them," Perez said. "I don't think it was in bad faith. I think it was just that they had a lot of work. After that there was very little time left.

"[The paperwork] came in at 24:02 and they sent them at 24:00. They arrived past the deadline. It is bad luck.

"I don't want to blame anyone but we don't really understand whether they needed eight hours to review the contracts or if it was just that they wanted to wait until the last minute to negotiate. When they said they would negotiate, I knew that we wouldn't get it done because I knew about Manchester United's lack of experience."

Perez said that Real did everything they could to bring De Gea in ahead of the deadline, in part because the club had promised the player as much.

"A year ago, we understood that the future after Iker [Casillas] was De Gea and we had made a promise to him," Perez said. "Now we don't have any idea what we will do next year.

Perez also speculated that another possible reason United took so long to return the paperwork was that "they didn't want to negotiate" and that "De Gea was never for sale" in the first place.

Regarding the possibility of an appeal when the deal broke down, Perez said he thought United only offered that option "so they wouldn't look bad."

"We had already taken that step and we knew that it was impossible," Perez said. "Many transfers have gone well for me but others no. I wanted to get [Patrick] Vieira and [Franck] Ribery and they didn't come.

"With the contract of [Cristiano] Ronaldo the same thing happened, but in the end we were able to do it."

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