‘I tell the club straight away to buy him while he has a release clause – it would’ve been a bargain’
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has revealed that he urged Manchester United to sign Erling Haaland for just £17m during his time at the club, but was ignored – twice.
The former United manager has been speaking about his time at Old Trafford during an appearance on the Stick to Football podcast.
During his chat, he spoke about the three now-world class footballers he tried to get United to fork out for.
One of these was Haaland, who Solskjaer had managed during his time at Norwegian side Molde. Solskjaer’s second spell at Molde was from 2015 to 2018, with Haaland breaking into the first team in 2017.
And the Norwegian saw Haaland’s early potential, urging United to sign him even before he became the United boss.
“I had him [Haaland] in Molde, for two seasons,” the Norwegian said.
“The summer before I got here (to Man United), I rang the club and said, ‘You’ve got to sign this boy. He’ll be top class’.
“That was June, or July 2018, and they said no. They had enough reports on players.”
When Solskjaer was then made manager of the Red Devils at the end of 2018, he once again recommended that the club sign Haaland. By this point, the then-18-year-old had signed for Red Bull Salzburg and had a buy-out clause in his contract of just €20m (£17m).
But just like before, his pleas fell on deaf ears.
“I became the caretaker manager, and we’d sold Haaland to RB Salzburg,” Solskjaer explained.
“I tell the club straight away to buy him while he has a release clause. We knew that then, and no one else would’ve paid the money – €20m, it would’ve been a bargain.
“It was the club’s decision to not go for it then. We never made bids or went in for him, until after he started scoring for Salzburg.
“By then, Borussia Dortmund were there, Juventus were there, everyone was there. His release clause then was still good – €60m.”
The rest, as they say, is history. Haaland spent just one season at Salzburg before moving to Borussia Dortmund where he scored 86 goals in 89 appearances.
Of course, Manchester City then signed the striker in the summer of 2022 by paying the $60m release clause, and Haaland went on to break countless goal-scoring records in his first season, netting a staggering 36 league goals.
Hindsight’s a fine thing isn’t it?
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