Former Bayern Munich and Chelsea boss Thomas Tuchel reportedly urged Manchester United to sign Antonio Rudiger during talks between himself and Sir Jim Ratcliffe.
Last weekend, it came out that Tuchel and Ratcliffe held a meeting in Monaco to discuss the former’s candidacy for the United managerial position.
Tuchel was mooted as a likely replacement for Erik ten Hag, whose United future was up in the air.
There was even a belief in Germany that Tuchel declined the opportunity to continue with Bayern because he had already secured his spot in the Old Trafford dugout.
However, Fabrizio Romano provided an update soon after and insisted that Tuchel would not take up the United job despite speaking with Ratcliffe.
Romano insisted that the German coach is set to go on a break before making a return to football management.
As it turned out, United ended up not needing to secure the services of someone to succeed Ten Hag. David Ornstein of The Athletic broke the news on Tuesday evening that Ten Hag is set to stay in the United hot seat. This is after the club concluded its end-of-season review.
Even more astounding is that Ten Hag is poised to be handed a new two-year deal to tie him down to the Red Devils for the foreseeable future.
Reflecting on the events that led up to United electing to keep Ten Hag, The Times shed some light on what was discussed between Tuchel and Ratcliffe in Monaco.
The newspaper states that one of the issues that came up was signings, with Tuchel namedropping Real Madrid’s Rudiger as someone he would have loved to join him at Old Trafford.
The Times state, “Tuchel fell out of the running after holding talks with Ratcliffe in Monaco last week.”
“One of Tuchel’s ideas was to sign Antonio Rüdiger, the 31-year-old Real Madrid centre back who is out of United’s price range (they only have a gross budget of about £35million to spend this summer); is considered too old; and would rather stay at Real than play Europa League football at Old Trafford next season.”
Indeed, Rudiger is someone United would have found incredibly hard to attain, even if Tuchel had been appointed. This is because of the chasm between the Premier League side and Madrid
United narrowly qualified for Europa League football after beating Manchester City at Wembley in the FA Cup final. Meanwhile, Rudiger played a key role as Los Blancos won a record 15th Champions League title.
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