One of the biggest transfers of the summer so far was when Portuguese midfielder Renato Sanches signed for Bayern Munich for a huge fee of €35 million.
The 18-year-old has been impressive for Portugal in Euro 2016 so far, and looks to have a big future ahead of him. Naturally, Man United were heavily linked with the player - as they seem to be for everyone these days - but it looks like this one had some merit to it.
According to the Manchester Evening News, new United manager Jose Mourinho was very keen on Sanches, and was pushing his new club to sign the player before he'd even signed a deal at Old Trafford.
According to MEN, United had a deal in place to sign Sanches, but made the Portuguese midfielder wait until after Mourinho was unveiled as their manager. Sanches decided that he didn't want to, and signed for Bayern instead. Publicly, Ed Woodward had said that Van Gaal wasn't interested in the player as the reason why he wasn't signed - but it seems that that was a smokescreen and Woodward didn't want to publicly undermine the outgoing Dutchman.
Essentially, the only reason why United didn't sign Sanches was because they thought it would hint to everyone that Jose Mourinho was going to be their new manager. As if that wasn't signposted already.
What a farce.
