The Real Madrid president, Florentino Pérez, has hit back at Manchester United over the failed David de Gea deal, saying the English club lacks transfer experience. Speaking to the radio station Cadena Ser, Pérez blamed the naivety of the United executive vice-chairman, Ed Woodward, for the collapse of the move, which fell apart because the paperwork was not signed off in time for Monday’s deadline.
“‘I think what they lack is experience,” Pérez said. “We have missed out on players before, Franck Ribéry and Patrick Vieira for example, but what is surprising is that someone wants to do a deal and only starts the process 12 hours before. It’s the inexperience of the new people in charge. We have worked with them [United] before, with Peter Kenyon and David Gill and with Sir Alex Ferguson.
“We still have a good relationship with Manchester United but this is exactly the same as what happened before with [Fábio] Coentrão and [Ander] Herrera and we thought they would have learned from what happened in the past.” United narrowly failed to sign Coentrão from Real and Herrera from Athletic Bilbao on deadline day two years ago.
He said it was the agent Jorge Mendes who informed Real Madrid that United were ready to negotiate the sale of De Gea having insisted throughout the summer they were not interested in doing business. Pérez claims a deal was agreed within half an hour but United then took eight hours to respond to contracts that were sent in the early afternoon. “I don’t want to blame anyone but it took eight hours,” he said.
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