Donny van de Beek may now call himself a Manchester United player, but it would have been close if the midfielder had worn the shirt of another European superpower. Real Madrid was emphatically after the Orange-international in the past year and even reached an agreement with Ajax about a transfer of Van de Beek. However, due to the corona crisis, this transfer was discontinued, his agent Guido Albers says on Tuesday in the podcast of Ajax Life.

“After his good series in the Champions League last year and the success of Ajax, several players were in the interest of European clubs. A number of those clubs called me and asked: ‘Guido, what about Donny? Is he ready for the next step? We would like to have it, ”says Albers. “One of those clubs was Real Madrid and I think that when Real Madrid calls, you should of course always listen to it seriously. We did that. ”

Albers and Real Madrid initially worked towards having Van de Beek make the transition to the Santiago Bernabéu last summer: “But Ajax was firmly against that. Matthijs de Ligt and Frenkie de Jong of course also left and they wanted to preserve part of the ashes ”, the agent continues his story. “We therefore agreed on a deadline and I didn’t meet that with Real Madrid, he stayed then. We had already arranged everything for the following year, all papers were actually signed last year. ”

“In December or January, Real Madrid was also here at the office of Marc Overmars, we also spoke with Edwin van der Sar. Then we shook hands: “Is it one hundred percent complete?” “Yes, it is one hundred percent.” ‘Well fantastic, then we’ll keep it quiet for a while, then he will be inspected in the coming months and then he will move to Madrid in the summer,’ ”Albers recalls.

After the coronavirus made its appearance in Europe at the beginning of this year, Van de Beek’s transfer came into question: “One of the clauses in the contract was that he still had to undergo a medical examination. That was not possible, because firstly there was corona and secondly, Madrid knew they were tied to him. And so it was decided to introduce a deadline there too, and we did not meet it. After that we also spoke with other clubs in consultation with Donny and in the end the choice fell on Manchester United ”, Albers concludes.