Man United had wanted to keep David Dea Gea throughout the summer. As a result, it's understandable that when news began to filter through that something happened with the deal, everyone assumed it was a fault was on United's end.
Plenty of jokes about a dodgy fax machine and it's all very funny. Except things are anything but funny for United. Now that the De Gea/Navas deal has collapsed, United are left with a goalkeeper that doesn't want to be there and a big hole in their balance sheet where somewhere in the region of £30 million should have been.
United have been adamant that they did their bit and they did it on time. Reports then emerged that it was Real who failed to get things done on time. English sources suggested they were one minute late with the paperwork, Spanish sources said it was closer to half an hour. One way or another it was a monumental fuck up.
However, Sky Sports are now reporting that it is even worse than that. They have had confirmation from the LFP that the paperwork from the Madrid side was not actually late, it never arrived at all.
The Spanish league's governing body had not received anything from Real confirming De Gea had been added to their squad.
Despite that information, it seems Real and United are still going ahead with an appeal. However, that now looks destined to fail after it was confirmed that FIFA had no power to order LFP to register a player.
Whether he wants to be there or not, De Gea is now as good as certain to be staying at Old Trafford with Navas remaining in Madrid.
