{"id":149174,"date":"2024-02-08T15:40:25","date_gmt":"2024-02-08T15:40:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2024\/02\/08\/ed-woodward-attempts-to-defend-man-utd-failures-to-sign-haaland-or-bellingham\/"},"modified":"2024-02-08T15:40:25","modified_gmt":"2024-02-08T15:40:25","slug":"ed-woodward-attempts-to-defend-man-utd-failures-to-sign-haaland-or-bellingham","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2024\/02\/08\/ed-woodward-attempts-to-defend-man-utd-failures-to-sign-haaland-or-bellingham\/","title":{"rendered":"Ed Woodward attempts to defend Man Utd failures to sign Haaland or Bellingham \u2013"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p><strong>Manchester United were interested in\u00a0signing\u00a0both Erling Haaland and Jude Bellingham long before the superstars joined their respective current clubs, with former Old Trafford chief Ed Woodward now giving his reasons why neither player ended up wearing red.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Haaland had made his name with Red Bull Salzburg during the first half of the 2019\/20 season and wound up joining Borussia Dortmund during the campaign\u2019s January transfer window.<\/p>\n<p>Bellingham emerged around the same time, starring for Birmingham in the Championship at the age of just 16. In the summer of 2020, he followed in Haaland\u2019s footsteps to Dortmund.<\/p>\n<p>That year, then United manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer wanted both of them and also Declan Rice, but the club ended up with none of the trio earmarked by the Norwegian.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOle wanted to bring down the age of the squad, so he identified three young players and told the club they should prioritise signing them,\u201d\u00a0<em>ESPN<\/em>\u00a0has been told by one of Solskjaer\u2019s ex-teammates.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUnited messed up moves for Haaland and Bellingham and didn\u2019t even make an effort for Rice. But they did sign Donny van de Beek, despite him not even being a player that Ole had identified as a target.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>When\u00a0<em>ESPN<\/em>\u00a0contacted Woodward, United\u2019s former executive vice-chairman and the man in charge of day-to-day business until early 2022, the response was that the guarantee of \u201cminutes\u201d Dortmund offered Bellingham would not be matched and simply that the club felt Haaland was destined for City, where his father \u2013 Alf Inge \u2013 had himself played. City didn\u2019t actually get the striker until 2022.<\/p>\n<p>Stay up to date with the latest Manchester United news \/ Visionhaus \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n<p>It had also been reported at the time that\u00a0United\u00a0would not agree to the release clause demands set out by Haaland\u2019s camp, while he too was assured of more immediate involvement at Dortmund.<\/p>\n<p>Bellingham was given a personal tour of United\u2019s training ground in March 2020, with Sir Alex Ferguson even roped in to meet with the then teenager and his family. Meanwhile, Haaland had previously played under Solskjaer at former club Molde and therefore had a prior connection.<\/p>\n<p>Woodward\u2019s tenure at United, when he was at times seen more as a UK-based extension of the Glazer family with little direct knowledge or experience of the business of football, is widely considered to have been a failure, coinciding with the club\u2019s steady decline since 2013.<\/p>\n<p>With replacement Richard Arnold, another viewed by fans as a Glazer ally, also out of the door and\u00a0former City Football Group chief Omar Berrada coming in\u00a0\u2013 by all accounts at the behest of the new INEOS contingent led by Sir Jim Ratcliffe \u2013 there is optimism for a much brighter future.<\/p>\n<p><!-- AI CONTENT END 1 --><\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Manchester United were interested in\u00a0signing\u00a0both Erling Haaland and Jude Bellingham long before the superstars joined their respective current clubs, with former Old Trafford chief Ed Woodward now giving his reasons why neither player ended up wearing red. Haaland had made his name with Red Bull Salzburg during the first half of the 2019\/20 season and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":149175,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-149174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Ed Woodward attempts to defend Man Utd failures to sign Haaland or Bellingham \u2013 - Ghanamma.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2024\/02\/08\/ed-woodward-attempts-to-defend-man-utd-failures-to-sign-haaland-or-bellingham\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ed Woodward attempts to defend Man Utd failures to sign Haaland or Bellingham \u2013 - Ghanamma.com\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Manchester United were interested in\u00a0signing\u00a0both Erling Haaland and Jude Bellingham long before the superstars joined their respective current clubs, with former Old Trafford chief Ed Woodward now giving his reasons why neither player ended up wearing red. 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