Manchester United are probably not ruing Casemiro’s transfer as much now but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t ill-advised, and the man who made it happen has now spilled the beans.
Tom Keane was Manchester United’s Head of Negotiations in the now-infamous 2022 summer transfer window.
Reeling from an upheaval of Ralf Rangnick leaving in chaos, Erik ten Hag had lost the first games in the league, conceding eight.
Panic set in and the club, led by Tom Keane as the head of negotiations, spent £85 million on Antony and £60 million on Casemiro.
At least Antony was young and is now rehabbing his value, but that Casemiro fee and wage even made Sir Jim Ratcliffe furious, and Keane has now given his reasoning behind doing that.
Tom Keane on Casemiro’s Man Utd contract negotiations
Keane was drafted into his role in a temporary capacity due to all the other upheaval at Old Trafford and he ended up overseeing the club at a crucial point in their trajectory.
Erik ten Hag’s first summer was when the coin dropped and it remains the window where United spent the highest amount of money straight away.
The effects of that window are still being felt, not least by Sir Jim Ratcliffe who criticised the Casemiro deal multiple times, before and after becoming part-owner.
Speaking to The Overlap Breakdown, Tom Keane has now revealed the details behind the Casemiro contract which don’t exactly paint him in a positive light.
Keane said: “With Casemiro, for example, he had three years left on his contract at Real Madrid. It wasn’t necessarily the most difficult player contract to do because if you’re gonna take out a player who’s just won a Champions League with Real Madrid and he’s got three years left on his contract, you pretty much know what you’re paying. The contract is already there in front of you.”
Keane’s Casemiro argument is deeply flawed
Listening to Keane, everything that happened in that window starts to make sense as to why Man Utd were so easily taken advantage of.
In Casemiro’s case, Keane effectively accepts that he gave the Brazilian his Real Madrid contract.
That wouldn’t have been so extraordinary had he not missed a crucial detail that the player Madrid gave that contract to was around 27 and at the peak of his career.
United not only gave the same contract to a 30-year-old version of that player but added a further two years on top of it.
Now, the club is in a position where they will be paying a 35-year-old version of Casemiro close to £350k/week, a sum that will make him impossible to shift.
Any logical club would take those factors into account and either walk away from the deal or negotiate a contract that reflected the reality of the player at the time.
United, on the other hand, were fleeced, first by Real Madrid, then by Casemiro, and Keane’s pride while he tells this sums up why the club needed a lot of change.
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