Manchester United so keen to sign Thiago quickly, they'll offer Barcelona more than his buy-out clause
Posted by SPORT WITNESS on June 29, 2013 at 17:49 in Sport Witness FootballView Discussions
Twitter today is full of a rumour that Thiago is set to stay at Barcelona after receiving an offer to double his money. It sounds quite similar to something we covered yesterday, a Twitter rumour gone a bit crazy. The two main accounts Tweeting the 'news' are @CentreTransfer and @DeadlineDayLive, that may sound like nothing, just some Twitter accounts spreading false rumours, but combined they have close to 300,000 followers which means the story has now spread like wildfire and become something of a 'fact'.
Both accounts say they have got the information from Spanish newspaper AS. Obviously the first place to check to see what truth was behind the reports was AS. So we did, expecting a huge front-page spread we found a story about the Spanish national team instead. Nothing on page 2 about Thiago, page 3, 4, nothing in the newspaper at all about the player being close to agreeing new terms with Barcelona.
It's been entirely made up, it's not on their Spanish website either, or on their English one, we can only assume someone has made it up to gain some followers on the social network. The tactic is certainly working for both the accounts.
What AS actually do say about Thiago is interesting. They haven't done a lengthy piece, the situation hit saturation point in Spain and they've all got a bit bored of it. However, they reckon that Manchester United want the deal completed soon, which would obviously give David Moyes a huge boost in his first week at Old Trafford.
In order to do this they are willing to pay Barcelona more than the player's buy-out clause. The current La Liga champions had been trying every trick in the book to bend the buy-out clause to make it less appealing, including threatening the player with a hefty tax bill. Manchester United are to said hope that by offering around €22m, as opposed to the buy-out clause of €18m, that they can get the player with less fuss and before any other club get into detailed personal negotiations with Thiago and his representatives.
Mazinho has also requested a clause which means his son is likely to get games at Manchester United or can leave for a similar fee to what they bought him for, that's also been reported elsewhere. Paying an extra few million to make the transfer easier also shows Thiago how much Manchester United want him and how they are willing to try and keep him out of the situation, Barcelona had brought up the tax issue because they wanted the clause personally from the player.
The extra effort from the new regime at Manchester United could help smooth things along and they may get their wish of securing the player to give David Moyes a brilliant first week.
Resigned to losing out comments like this based on a non existent AS story.
