Schalke 04 chief: 'Manchester United were desperate to sign Breel Embolo'

By Daniel Lewis, Senior Reporter | 31 July 2016

Schalke 04 beat Manchester United to the signing of Basel's Breel Embolo after quickly wrapping up talks over a £20m deal, sporting director Christian Heidel claims.

Schalke 04 sporting director Christian Heidel has claimed that Jose Mourinho "desperately wanted to sign" Breel Embolo for Manchester United.

The Bundesliga outfit won the race to land the Switzerland international, who agreed a five-year deal at club for an undisclosed fee - thought to be around £20m -earlier this week.

Embolo was also strongly linked with a switch to Old Trafford earlier this summer, while Barcelona and Arsenal are also thought to have shown an interest.

Heidel has now confirmed that United were indeed keen to add Embolo to their ranks, but were beaten to the chase for the Basel man by Schalke after just five hours of talks.

"There are a number of reasons why we signed Embolo," he is quoted as saying by The Sun. "First and foremost there are sporting reasons. It's nothing new that he is a great player. There is a reason why Mourinho desperately wanted to sign him for Manchester United.

"But we also see him as a player the Schalke fans can identify with, a bit like Benedikt Howedes, Leroy Sane and someone like Ralf Fahrmann. Embolo had a similar role at Basel, where 80 per cent of the shirts they sold had his name on it. He is very open, is always smiling and makes it easy for people to like him.

"When we realised there was a possibility that we could miss out on signing him due to other clubs' interest, we had to move fast. President Clemens Tonnies happily made his plane available. We flew out to Montpellier at 1pm and returned five hours later. We had wrapped up the deal in that short period."

United have so far added three new faces to their ranks during the off-season - Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Eric Bailly and free agent Zlatan Ibrahimovic.