I worked for a Premier League giant – we accidentally bid £35million for Lionel Messi
Messi in Manchester? City's offer didn't go down too well...
Former Manchester City assistant coach Mark Bowen has revealed the club once lodged an ‘accidental’ bid for Lionel Messi.
Bowen served as Mark Hughes’ assistant manager at a number of clubs and followed his countryman to City in 2008 following Sheikh Mansour’s takeover from previous owner Thaksin Shinawatra.
The club immediately embarked on the first of many summer spending sprees with Vincent Kompany among those in the first wave of new arrivals, with the signing of Robinho from Real Madrid during the same window underlining the club’s huge spending power and ambition.
Robinho was one of a number of players considered at City with Bowen revealing the club were throwing around offers for a number of high-profile players to serve as their ‘statement signing’.
But a miscommunication involved chief executive Gary Cook and his staff resulted in an offer for Messi landing in the inbox of Barcelona president Joan Laporta – who promptly told them to forget it.
Bowen told the Business of Sport podcast: ‘‘It was almost deadline day and Gary Cook has said to Mark [Hughes] “right, the owners want to make a statement”.
‘And at one time, we had £30million+, £30million for [Dimitar] Berbatov, £30million for Robinho, £30million for Franck Ribery, because they were just chucking out [these offers] to clubs around Europe, bids of £30-35million to see which one would bite.
‘And as it turned out, it was Robinho. Now here’s a funny story. So while all this is going on, Gary Cook is in London, he’s got different people on the board and they are all chasing down things and all of a sudden they get this thing through from the president of Barcelona saying Manchester City have apparently offered £35million for Lionel Messi.
‘So we get to the bottom of it. What actually happened, someone had turned around, probably Gary Cook, and said “Jesus Christ, this is getting messy.”
‘So someone has sent an offer to Messi. The president has come back saying “who the f**k do you think you are? Please back away.”’
By 2008, Messi was already firmly among the best players on the planet, missing out on the Ballon d’Or that year to Cristiano Ronaldo having finished third behind the Portuguese and Kaka in 2007.
Robinho later confirmed he thought he was signing for Manchester United rather than City.
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