90min

Dayot Upamecano admits he wanted to accept Man Utd offer at 17

By Jamie Spencer

Man Utd offered Dayot Upamecano a contract at 17 but he chose Red Bull Salzburg instead
Man Utd offered Dayot Upamecano a contract at 17 but he chose Red Bull Salzburg instead / Boris Streubel/Getty Images
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RB Leipzig centre-back Dayot Upamecano, who has already agreed to join Bayern Munich this summer, has revealed that he rejected the chance to sign for Manchester United when he was just 17 despite initially being keen to accept the offer.

Upamecano was in the youth ranks at French club Valenciennes when a number of sides were interested in offering him a professional deal.

Dayot Upamecano
Upamecano will join Bayern this summer but he was previously coveted by a number of clubs as a teenager / Pool/Getty Images

Media reports heavily linked Upamecano with United at the time, but it was Red Bull Salzburg who ultimately persuaded the teenage prospect to join them instead.

The French defender initially started out in Austria’s lower leagues with Salzburg’s feeder club Liefering but had progressed to the first-team before the end of his debut season. Upamecano was then only part of the senior side in Salzburg for another few months before making the next step up the Red Bull ladder and joining RB Leipzig in January 2017.

Looking back on his career crossroad moment at 17, Upamecano has revealed that he did want to join United before his parents stepped in and made him consider things in more detail.

Upamecano wanted to join Man Utd but then reconsidered
Upamecano wanted to join Man Utd but then reconsidered / Clive Brunskill/Getty Images

“I was a young boy. I wanted to sign for them straight away. Manchester United! But then my parents took me aside and said: ‘Let’s think carefully about this’,” he told The Athletic.

Ralf Rangnick, who was director of football for both Red Bull clubs at the time, presented a strong case for Upamecano to join Salzburg instead.

“We thought about it for a long time and then decided that going [step by step] was the best option for me. Everything Ralf said came true,” the player explained.

Speaking to SoFoot in 2019, agent Thierry Martinez said a potential deal for a teenage Upamecano to join United had collapsed four years earlier because certain aspects of the proposal relating to his living situation were changed and were no longer satisfactory.

Dayot Upamecano
in 2019, Upamecano's agent said certain aspects of the Man Utd proposal from 2015 had not been satisfactory / Oliver Hardt/Getty Images

“A flat was promised, but that changed to a host family with only six return trips for his parents. When you uproot a player at such a young age, that isn’t enough. I wanted Dayot to have a stable emotional balance off the pitch,” Martinez said at the time.

Upamecano did re-emerge on United's radar when scouts started to compile lists of possible centre-back targets this summer but that interest later cooled once it became increasingly clear he would be staying in Germany to join Bayern instead.

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