Jorge Mendes biography claims Manchester United did not gazump Arsenal

Cristiano Ronaldo joined Manchester United and not Arsenal because cost of Emirates wrecked dream deal.

Arsenal failed to sign Cristiano Ronaldo as an 17-year-old because of the club’s plans to build the Emirates Stadium, according to a new biography of the Portuguese superstar’s agent, Jorge Mendes.

Arsène Wenger has said that missing out on Ronaldo before he joined Manchester United from Sporting Lisbon is the biggest regret of his career, especially because he spent a week-long trial at Arsenal.

It had previously been claimed that United gazumped Arsenal because of Sir Alex Ferguson’s Portuguese assistant, Carlos Queiroz, who had links with Sporting.

But the new biography of Mendes, the 'super-agent’ who is said to have negotiated transfers worth a total of £1 billion, claims that Arsenal missed out on Ronaldo because they failed to meet the asking price, and that the amount they could commit was compromised by their move from Highbury to Ashbu
rton Grove.

The book has been written with Mendes’s approval and support and is to be released in English later this year under the title The Agent One, a reference to another of his most famous clients, Jose Mourinho.

It charts Mendes’s rise from nightclub owner to the world’s most powerful football agent, representing Ronaldo, Mourinho, Diego Costa, Manchester United players Radamel Falcao, Ángel di María and David de Gea, plus Real Madrid stars James Rodríguez, Pepe and Fábio Coentrão. As well as giving the fullest account of Arsenal’s failure to land Ronaldo, the book also reveals that Mourinho’s office at Chelsea features a pile of books which are all about … Jose Mourinho, and that Mourinho rejected the chance to sign Falcao and Di Maria because of Uefa’s financial fair play rules and because he did not want to upset Chelsea’s players by unbalancing the wage bill.
It claims that Mourinho signed a contract to coach Real Madrid hours after winning the Champions League with Inter Milan, and also that Costa had no knowledge he was joining Atlético Madrid in 2007 until he boarded a plane to the Spanish capital.
Mendes crashed his car on the way to meet Sir Alex Ferguson for the first time in 2002, turning up at the meeting with a badly bruised ear. Of the transfer of Ronaldo, the book reveals that Mendes and Sporting director of football Carlos Freitas held meetings with United, Juventus, Parma, Real Madrid and Arsenal about the winger, but it was then Arsenal chairman, David Dein, who most impressed. The book adds that Arsenal could only offer a small, unspecified sum.
Mendes says: “There was a moment in which I really thought he was going to Arsenal. David Dein is a spectacular person but, with the construction of their stadium, they were left with very little money and it wasn’t possible.”
Ronaldo also recounts his trip to Arsenal: “We were travelling by car and Jorge was calling us constantly telling me to hide so no one would see me. We went to a service station and I had to hide my face. I remember back then that Jorge was going crazy, those were Jorge’s craziest days.”