RYAN Giggs has revealed that Manchester United turned down the opportunity to sign Kylian Mbappe – after he got a tip-off on the beach.
Giggs, speaking on the Rio Ferdinand Presents podcast, said that he was made aware of Mbappe when he was United’s assistant manager between 2014-2016.
He said: “So, I’m in the south of France. I was coaching United, so it’d be 2015. I’ve been for a walk in the local village and I’m walking back to the hotel.
“I’m walking on the beach back to the hotel. And I can feel someone following me. I get to the hotel and then all of a sudden I can feel someone coming up to me. Anyway, this guy is called Lionel, French guy.
“So he comes up to me and says ‘hi, I’m Lionel. I just wanted to just say hello. I’m a big United fan and big fan of yours. But I watch a lot of youth football in France, and you have to look at this player.
‘He’s called Kylian Mbappé. He’s at Monaco and I think he’s a player for Man United.’
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“A few weeks later, he emailed me all the details. So me and Albert [Stuivenberg] again, who’s the coach with Arsenal, he was another assistant at United at the time.
“We used to in the afternoons just go and watch games or go and watch players at the training ground. So anyway, I’ve told him about this thing. He says ‘come on, let’s look him up.’
“And we watch a few Monaco youth games and we saw him and just went, ‘wow, what is this?’ You know, you can see players and they can be special, but he did look exceptional.
“So anyway, we told the scouting team. They went to watch him. Someone in France went to watch him and he was actually playing PSG. Monaco were playing PSG.
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“So they went to Paris to watch him. Anyway, I think a few weeks later, I said to the guy ‘how did it go?’ and he went ‘yeah, they weren’t too sure about him, so we just left it, and that was it.’”
Mbappé actually went on to join PSG on loan in 2017 before joining permanently the next year for around £170m.