Gairat Khasbiullin, the agent of Manchester City centre-back Abdukodir Khusanov, has revealed that Manchester United were the first club that showed interest in his client.
The defender joined the reigning Premier League champions from RC Lens earlier this week in a £33.5 million deal, but he could have linked up with the Red Devils instead.
However, former Man United manager Erik ten Hag felt he was not ready to make an impact in his team despite a scout from the club insisting he possessed their DNA.
“The first interested club was Manchester United,” Khasbiullin told Championat. “In May 2023, United scout Nicolas Cinalli was in Argentina for the U20 World Cup.
“After the second match of Uzbekistan, he found my contact and wanted to meet me. What did he tell me? That Khusanov has the Manchester United DNA.
“That was the moment I realised that the guy would end up at a top club. The scout made a detailed report, but Ten Hag said he was not quite ready to help the team at that time.
“We recently corresponded with this Manchester United scout. He congratulated us on his transfer to City, but regretted that the player did not end up at United.”
Man United are not short of options at centre-back, but they could end up regretting not going after the former Lens star if he proves to be a quality addition to their city rivals.
While most fans will want to blame Ten Hag for the Red Devils missing out on a player with such huge potential, he was not convinced he could improve his current options in the position.
Bayern Munich duo Matthijs de Ligt and Noussair Mazraoui were signed instead, and they have remained key players in the team since Ruben Amorim took over from Ten Hag.
Man United are looking to ring major changes to their squad going forward, and they will hope to pay more attention to hidden gems like the new Man City player across Europe and beyond.
