Manchester United passed on Kylian Mbappé after Ryan Giggs' scouting trip
· Yahoo Sports
Ryan Giggs has revealed how Manchester United once passed up the opportunity to sign Kylian Mbappé.
Giggs was serving on the coaching staff at United back in 2015 when a chance encounter with a stranger prompted him to recommend that his club take a closer look at Mbappé, who was playing for Monaco at the time. Giggs, appearing on 'Rio Ferdinand Presents: The Debrief,' went to watch the striker perform before urging United to do likewise.
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Which United's scouting team did - before concluding he wouldn't be good enough for them. Mbappé has since gone on to become a global soccer superstar, having claimed the FIFA World Cup with France before netting a hat-trick in a second final.
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Mbappé joined Paris Saint-Germain in 2018 for £162 million (around $210 million) - the second most expensive signing in history. He claimed the Golden Boot at this summer's World Cup, while cementing his status as the tournament's all-time leading scorer.
Now Giggs has opened up about how Mbappe slipped through United's fingers - in what could rank as one of the most costly blunders the English giants have ever made.
Giggs said, via The Mirror: "So, I'm in the south of France. I've been for a walk in the local village and I'm walking back to the hotel. And I can feel someone, you know, when you feel someone like following you. I get to the hotel and then all of a sudden I can feel someone coming up to me.
"This guy is called Lionel. He comes up to me and says, 'Hi, I'm Lionel. I just wanted to just say hello. I'm a big United fan and big fan of yours. But I watch a lot of youth football in France, and you have to look at this player. He's called Kylian Mbappé. He's at Monaco and I think he's a player for Manchester United.
"A few weeks later, he emailed me all the details. So me and Albert, he was another assistant at United at the time, I've told him about this thing.
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"We go to a few youth games with Monaco and we've seen him (Mbappé) and we were just like, 'Wow, what is this?' You can see players and they can be special, but he did look exceptional, obviously.
"We told the (United) scouting team. They went to watch him. Someone in France went to watch him and he was actually playing PSG.
"Monaco were playing PSG. So they went to Paris to watch him. Anyway, I think a few weeks later, I said to this guy, 'How did it go?' He went, 'Yeah, they weren't too sure about him, so we just left it'. And that was it.
"And this same guy, Lionel, because I went through my texts with him, and in 2018 he's telling me about, 'There's a player he is Under-14s, but he's playing Under-17s, Rayan Cherki.' And then I went to the next message: 'There's a player at St. Etienne, [William Saliba]. I think he'd be a good player for Man United."
Like Mbappé, both Cherki and Saliba are now France internationals and superstars in their own right at Manchester City and Arsenal, respectively.