According to Sky in Italy, United had an £85m bid for Pogba rejected by Juventus on Tuesday, although Mourinho has since refused to confirm or deny whether the France global is a target.
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British media reported that the club’s executive vice chairman Ed Woodward pulled out of the club’s preseason China tour to meet Pogba’s agent Mino Raiola amid talk of a five-year deal.
“First of all, we know the player belongs to another club, which is not a small club”. I asked for four players and gave them a few options.
“I am not going to try to make you naive and believe that we are not trying for one player”, said Mourinho. We have three players to fill that profile.
Paris St Germain’s Blaise Matuidi and Chelsea midfielder Nemanja Matic have also been linked with moves to Old Trafford, but Pogba remains the name on everyone’s lips.
“We established the profile of four players to improve the squad, to give us more options, especially adapted to my way of thinking about football. I am really confident Mr Woodward and the owners will get the profile of player they think the squad needs to have a good balance”. With Manchester United switching advertisers, from Aon to Chevrolet, and switching kit makers, from Nike to Adidas, their uniform revenue alone has almost tripled in just two years, from $71.9 million per year to $207.9 million per year.
“I can’t tell you if Pogba is worth that price today but all I know is that he’s an exceptional player”.
The dynamic French midfielder looks increasingly likely to become the most expensive player in footballing history with Manchester United ready to pay just over £100million to Juventus – smashing the previous record held by Real Madrid, when they paid Tottenham around £85million for Gareth Bale.
“There is no deal done regarding Paul Pogba, lots of bla bla bla”, he tweeted.
“I am quite surprised with so many question marks around this guy”, said Mourinho.
“I’m not going to hide also and say that fourth place is a target and anything better will be fantastic”.
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Meanwhile, a separate report from The Guardian said that Juve accepted a fee worth £92 million for the club plus an additional £18.4 million directly given to Raiola “to conclude the deal”.
