A ‘blitz’ by directors in Italy helped Manchester United to secure the signing of Patrick Dorgu from Lecce in the January transfer window.
That’s according to Calciomercato, who cover the transfer today and how Manchester United had to move to ‘overcome great competition’ for the wing-back.
They explain that Manchester United ‘beat everyone’ to Dorgu last month, deciding to move for the player after watching for several months and sending scouts to Italy several times to study him closely.
They decided to move last month and closed the deal thanks to a ‘blitz by the directors’ in Italy, where they met with Lecce sporting director Pantaleo Corvino and the two parties got close before finding a definitive agreement a few days later.
Manchester United were forced to make a significant investment, paying close to €40m to take Dorgu to the Premier League. That represented a huge profit for Lecce, who paid €200,000 to sign him.
In fact, Dorgu represents the biggest capital gain in the Italian club’s history, exceeding the figures for the sale of Morten Hjulmand to Sporting Club de Portugal.
Manchester United had to ‘overcome great competition’ to sign Dorgu as Napoli were very keen on him and had set up negotiations to get a deal done for the summer. That was being actively worked on, forcing Manchester United to move for him in January.
Napoli, Juventus and AC Milan were also interested in Italy, eyeing Dorgu as a replacement for Theo Hernandez, but Manchester United got ahead of them all and got the deal done.
