Hypocrital Real Madrid superstar Kylian Mbappe ruled out Man Utd transfer for one ironic reason

Ryan Giggs has spilt the beans on historic Manchester United links to Kylian Mbappe by explaining that the Red Devils never seriously pursued the electric Real Madrid star after scouts had incredibly expressed doubts about his ability, while it’s also emerged that another shock reason kept the Frenchman away from Old Trafford.

Mbappe, who was the most sought-after talent in world football at the time, signed for PSG in 2017 after recording 42 goals and assists in 46 games in his breakout season for Monaco.

But, years before his sale, Giggs was notified of the promising forward by a French local, who recommended he had a look at him whilst he was in the Monaco youth team.

Explaining what went down and why his recommendation to United’s talent spotters was ultimately ignored, Giggs told Rio Ferdinand Presents: “So, I’m in the south of France. I’ve been for a walk in the local village, and I’m walking back to the hotel. And I can feel someone, you know, when you feel someone like following you.

“I get to the hotel, and then all of a sudden, I can feel someone coming up to me. This guy is called Lionel. He comes up to me and says, ‘Hi, I’m Lionel. I just wanted to just say hello. I’m a big United fan and a big fan of yours. I watch a lot of youth football in France, and you have to look at this player. He’s called Kylian Mbappé. He’s at Monaco, and I think he’s a player for Manchester United

“A few weeks later, he emailed me all the details. So, me and Albert [Stuivenberg]- he was another assistant at United at the time- I’ve told him about this thing.

“We go to a few youth games with Monaco, and we’ve seen him, and we were just like, ‘Wow, what is this?’ You can see players, and they can be special, but he did look exceptional, obviously.

“We told the scouting team. They went to watch him. Someone in France went to watch him, and he was actually playing PSG.

“So they went to Paris to watch him. Anyway, I think a few weeks later, I said to this guy, ‘How did it go?’ He went, ‘Yeah, they weren’t too sure about him, so we just left it.’ And that was it…”

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Why Kylian Mbappe actually rejected Manchester United

With an incredible 91 goals in 108 appearances for Real Madrid, Mbappe has underlined his status as one of the best players in the world game and, at the age of 27, is now very much entering his peak years.

Annoyingly for United, Mbappe will perhaps go down as the one that got away and, had they followed up Giggs’ recommendation with more conviction, maybe his career could have taken a very different path.

So, before his big break, the Red Devils had made their mind up about Mbappe; not up to the Manchester United standard.

But, apart from being written off years prior, Mbappe had his own, rather ironic, reasons to avoid a move to Old Trafford.

According to L’Équipe (via Metro), Mbappe privately revealed he had no interest in moving to United due to their manager at the time, Jose Mourinho, and his style of football.

The hypocritical stance now looks somewhat ironic, given Mbappe is currently managed by Mourinho at the Bernabeu after the Special One was welcomed back to the club by Florentino Perez this summer after a turbulent 2025/26 campaign.

Furthermore, it was also claimed at the time of the player rejecting United that Mbappe had claimed that he worried about his potential playing time, with Marcus Rashford and Anthony Martial already competing for a spot in the United frontline.

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Even then, Mbappe reportedly had a desire to play for Real Madrid, alongside Cristiano Ronaldo and under Zinedine Zidane.

Obviously, Mbappe has now achieved this goal, but is playing under the man whose style of football he found so unattractive over a decade ago.

Life has started reasonably well for Mourinho in Madrid, winning three in four of their La Liga games and picking up a win in their opening Champions League fixture.

But the irony will not be lost that Mourinho and his star man were kept apart nine years ago due to the player’s apparent objections to playing under the Portuguese’s often divisive brand of football.