MANCHESTER CITY made an accidental £70million bid for Lionel Messi in 2008 that was just a couple of weeks too late to be accepted.
The Athletic’s interview with former City exec Garry Cook reveals a mega-money farce almost unfolding at the club when they were desperately trying to sign a marquee name just before Sheikh Mansour took over.
Lionel Messi could have spent the last 11 years in the blue kit of Manchester CityCredit: Getty Images – Getty
Brazilian Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Dimitar Berbatov and Fernando Torres were all serious targets before Robinho broke the British transfer record with a £32.5million move.
But that deal could have been more than doubled for the Barcelona magician if some boardroom slapstick had actually forced through an era-transforming transfer.
Cook was in a room with Pairoj Piempongsant, assistant to then-owner Thaksin Shinawatra, while on the phone to former City COO Paul Alridge when the comedy of errors occurred.
He explained: “Pairoj Piempongsant was getting heated.
“The phone was on the table and he was speaking to Paul Aldridge, who had previously been with West Ham and was also part of Thaksin’s world.
“There’s Paul with his London accent: ‘Pairoj, you got to tell me what we’re doing, it’s getting out of control’.
“Pairoj was lying on a chaise lounge, getting a massage, and shouting: ‘Yes, yes, yes! Very messy, messy, it’s getting messy.’
“Something got lost in translation and — on my daughter’s eyesight, this is the truth — that was misheard as ‘we’ve got to get Messi’”.
Garry Cook was in charge of some of the biggest deals in Man City’s regenerationCredit: News Group Newspapers Ltd
The miscommunication led to Cook making the gigantic bid for the Argentina hero that Barcelona contacted the Premier League about to check if it was genuine.
The record fee at the time was the £30m Chelsea had paid for Andriy Shevchenko in 2006 and was about to be blown away, in error.
Cook said: “Paul came to me afterwards: ‘Garry, this is getting confusing, I don’t know what we are doing here.’
“I said: ‘Put the offer in, let’s see what we come up with’.
“Then Dave Richards called me the next day from the Premier League: ‘Garry, have you put in an offer for Lionel Messi? Seventy million pounds? Are you mad?’”
“He said he’d had a call from Barcelona and they wanted to know if it was real.
They were saying to Dave that, if it was real, they might have done a deal a few weeks earlier.”
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Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
