Live broadcast on August 4th according to The Mirror, Manchester United legendary coach Sir Alex Ferguson almost refused to sign Van Persie because he thought the players were old and had frequent injuries.
In the summer of 2012, Manchester United signed Van Persie from Arsenal, for which they paid 24 million pounds to Arsenal. After Manchester United introduced Van Persie, he scored 30 goals in the first season, which was the key for Ferguson to win the Premier League championship.
Before being elected to the Premier League Hall of Fame, Ferguson said: “To be honest, I think Van Persie’s joining won us the league championship that season. He was great. In the match against Aston Villa, he took Rooney’s pass and scored a goal. We won the league championship. You can’t get a better goal than this.”
Despite such comments, Ferguson was not keen on signing Van Persie at first. When his assistant Rene murentine initially proposed this idea, the move was rejected by Ferguson.
Murentine said: “It was in January, and I received a call from Van Persie’s agent. He said Van Persie would not extend his contract at Arsenal. He wanted to stay in England… he wanted to go to Manchester United, playing under Ferguson.”
“I think this is a bit like a statement. The only thing I can do is to ask. So I walked into Ferguson’s office and I said Van Persie was interested in joining us. What do you think? He said, no, he is too old. He is 27 years old (actually 28 years old) and has some injury records. I said, OK, we will investigate and I will not refuse him immediately until then.”
“We had a discussion and we said that this team needed something and they needed sparks, so what I did was to find some good players and see if we could sign Modrich or Van Persie, most people think Van Persie will be excellent.”
Van Persie played for Manchester United for three seasons and scored 58 goals in 105 appearances in various competitions. In 2015, he transferred from Manchester United to Turkish team Fenerbahce. In 2019, he ended his career in Feyenoord.
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