Two multi-billion pound institutions who advocate professionalism, integrity and a will to do things in the right way scupper what should have been a straightforward transfer and attempt to shift the blame onto each other – only in football, and only in the transfer window.

According to reports, there has been a verbal agreement between David de Gea and Real Madrid in place for months now, and Manchester United had knocked back repeated approaches from the Spaniards for their goalkeeper, telling them that they would not budge on €40m.

Ultimately, United were in a very strong position. De Gea is in the last year of his contract. They were in no rush to sell their Player of the Year of the past two seasons and therefore were happy to sit it out and wait for what they considered to be the right amount of money to come in from Madrid. But that offer did not come. Until Monday morning, when negotiations resumed and, according to the statement that Los Blancos have since released, an agreement had been reached between the two clubs by 1:39pm Spanish time – the €40m that United wanted which included Madrid’s current keeper Keylor Navas. 

However, this is where it gets, quite frankly, farcical. Madrid then go on to depict United as the main causes of the calamity by saying that they sent amendments to the contract that had previously been agreed eight hours earlier and that they were quickly accepted by Madrid before being sent in the opposite direction at 11:32pm. It appears, then, that the main reason why the saga was perpetuated was due to the Costa Rican Navas, who took some persuading to give up his current No.1 spot at Santiago Bernabeu. It wasn’t until 11:53pm that a deal was agreed for him.

Madrid then tried to submit the FIFA Transfer Matching System [TMS] data for De Gea, but realised that by the time it had gone through, it was too late. They tried their luck with Javier Tebas over at La Liga headquarters anyway, where they were naturally rejected. The statement from Madrid concludes by saying "in short, Real Madrid have done everything they could at all times for deal to take place.”

In terms of the deal itself, perhaps United were at fault, and Madrid might be correct in saying that they did everything they could in the last 11 hours of the transfer window, but why not do everything that they could in the last two months? The capital club have known exactly what United wanted for their man for a while now and have simply been too stubborn to offer it at an earlier date. Madrid daily paper AS’s front page on Tuesday read ‘Florentinada’, which effectively translates as ‘Florentino mistake,’ acknowledging the part that Madrid President Florentino Perez had to play in all of this.

It has been suggested that Perez perhaps wanted not only De Gea but the kudos that came with securing a deal at a fairly reasonable price at such a late stage, not too dissimilar to the way in which he ‘won’ at the culmination of the Gareth Bale rigmarole. He was able to parade his new, prized asset at the Bernabeu and was ready to do exactly the same at 1pm on Tuesday with a pre-planned press conference ready for De Gea.

Unfortunately for Perez, he did not get his man this time, at least not yet anyway. Inevitably, De Gea will sign for Madrid, but he will have to see out another year at Old Trafford, where his professionalism will be sorely put to the test. As for Navas, he will just be happy to finally be getting first-team football, but despite his standing ovation from Los Blancos’ faithful on Saturday, he too is left in an awkward position because when the paperwork on the De Gea deal does eventually go through on time, he will be discarded once again.    

La Liga - Club News