It's been revealed that Manchester United went to extreme lengths to keep Wayne Rooney out of the clutches of Chelsea back in 2014 - and they even managed to wrap up a deal for Juan Mata without speaking to their Premier League rivals at the same time.
United shelled out around £37.1million to bring Mata to Old Trafford after the Spanish maestro had fallen out of favour with then-Blues boss Jose Mourinho. However, a deal to sign the playmaker was anything but straightforward given Chelsea's interest in striking a deal for Rooney.
A new report from The Athletic has shed some light on how United managed to pull it off. The club were wary of the Blues interest in Rooney and, as such, former chief executive Ed Woodward was reluctant to take any calls or sit around the negotiating table with the Chelsea hierarchy.
United had to get creative to land their man and managed to utilise Mata's father, Juan Sr and Colin Pomford, a Madrid-based agent, to thrash out a deal over the course of 'several months'. The deal is considered to be one of the few successes that Woodward managed to oversee during his turbulent tenure at the club.
United may have managed to hang onto Rooney at the time, but the club's all-time record goalscorer opened up on that previous interest back in 2020 - although he claimed he was closer to a move to Barcelona rather than Chelsea.
Speaking to The Utd Podcast, Rooney said: “I think it was well documented that Chelsea and Mourinho wanted to sign me. There was Real Madrid, Barcelona and the Man City thing keeps cropping up, but there was never the option for me to go there.
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“Although there were rumours on that as well, but the other three, really, were more realistic options. In my head, at the time, in that two-day period, I was ready to go and play in Spain.
“Ideally, I would have liked to have gone to Barcelona, but it was looking more likely to be Real Madrid than Barcelona. Chelsea were always there as well.”
After eight years of service at Old Trafford, Mata pulled the curtain down on his United career earlier this year when he revealed he would be leaving the club at the end of his current contract this summer.
Since arriving from Chelsea, Mata went on to make 285 appearances for Manchester United, netting 51 goals in all competitions. The Sun claimed earlier this month that the 34-year-old had been offered a huge £8.5m-a-year deal to sign for Saudi Arabian giants Al-Hilal, while the likes of Real Sociedad, Sevilla and Real Betis are all keen on bringing Mata - who made his name with Valencia - back to La Liga.
