Earlier on Wednesday, we covered a report from France claiming that Manchester United were ‘continuing’ their negotiations for AS Monaco’s Benoît Badiashile.
The defender has been a long-term target for the Premier League club, and they were joined by Bayer Leverkusen in their efforts to capture a talent in a much desired role.
That report came from TF1 journalist Julien Maynard, but RMC Sport’s Mohamed Bouhafsi now has an update.
The French reporter took to Twitter on Wednesday afternoon to reveal that Monaco had ‘turned down’ a bid of €25m from Manchester United for the 19-year-old.
Source proche de Monaco explique que « Benoit restera à moins que Manchester fasse une offre irrefusable comme Martial »
Leverkusen compte bien revenir à la charge pour le défenseur !— Mohamed Bouhafsi (@mohamedbouhafsi) August 26, 2020
Furthermore, he pointed out Niko Kovać, the principality club’s new manager, who was said to really like Badiashile, ‘has told his board he wants to keep the Frenchman and that they should reject all bids for him’.
He then added that a source ‘close to Monaco’ told him that Badiashile ‘will stay at the club unless Manchester United make an offer that cannot be refused, like with [Anthony] Martial’.
If true, and there’s no reason to doubt it, this shows how badly Manchester United want to add more talent to their squad, and how little Ole Gunnar Solskjaer seems to trust the current options at his disposal.
Now we need to see just how much they want the youngster.