Sky Sports pundit claims Colombian hit man wanted to head back to Madrid.
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Respected journalist Guillem Balague has claimed that Manchester United new boy Radamel Falcao actually wanted to join Real Madrid this summer and tried to engineer a move to the Bernabeu before settling on a switch to Old Trafford, Sky Sports reports.
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The Colombia striker had been linked with a number of high-profile clubs including Manchester City and Arsenal, but had set his heart on the Bernabeu and tweeted ‘#HalaMadrid Dream come true’ on his official account on Saturday evening before later removing the message.
And Sky’s Spanish football expert Guillem Balague believes that the Colombian’s agent, Jorge Mendes, had desperately tried to offload the player to the European champions, claiming that he would provide a better option than the side’s current first choice striker Karim Benzema.
“Jorge Mendes tried all year, in fact the whole summer, to move him to Real Madrid,” he told Sky Sports News HQ.
“Real Madrid have been saying all along for the whole summer that they just weren’t interested in Falcao.
They wanted a striker, but not somebody to be challenging Karim Benzema; they wanted somebody who was happy to be a number two – a Diego Lopez type of figure who would be happy to accept that there was a way of playing, Benzema would be the number nine and they could come on and do something in the second half of games.
“Chicharito fills that gap, but Falcao was never the kind of player they wanted. The fact Jorges Mendes hasn’t been able to get that deal done means that Real Madrid were never open to that possibility.”
Balague also claims that United’s interest came at the last minute as the player had been closest to joining cross-city neighbours Man City on Sunday night, and denies that Arsenal were ever in the race to land his signature despite them needing to replace the injured Olivier Giroud.
“I never heard anything about Arsenal at all. I don’t think Arsenal were interested,” he added.
“They only wanted a central midfielder who could play centre-back and the budget they’ve got is £7million or £8million – and with that in mind, Falcao was never a possibility.
“In the case of Manchester City, it became clear that Alvaro Negredo was wanted by Valencia and the deal wasn’t done quickly because Valencia thought all along that City were waiting to see if they could replace him with Falcao.
“There were conversations between City and his agents and nobody could deny that, but when Manchester United came into the equation late on Sunday night they said yes to everything and the deal went through.”
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