Former Manchester United chief executive Peter Kenyon has shed more light on why the club didn’t sign Ronaldinho in the summer of 2003, with the Brazilian star joining Barcelona instead.

United were in the market for a marquee signing after allowing David Beckham to join Real Madrid, but the circumstances around the then England captain’s departure may have also contributed to changing the club’s opinion on the idea recruiting of Ronaldinho in his place.

It has previously been the understanding that Barcelona may have offered more money and that Ronaldinho eventually just changed his mind. But Kenyon has offered a fresh angle, suggesting that United also started to see red flags during the process of thrashing out a deal.

Speaking on Rio Ferdinand Presents, the new name for VIBE with Five, Kenyon denied there is any truth to claims United lowered their offer after agreeing a fee with Paris Saint-Germain and pointed to how many people Ronaldinho had in his entourage, as well as other concerns.

“Normally, in these cases you’re dealing with the player and his agent. Here, we’re dealing with the player, several agents and about 20 other people in the room. He’s a great player, but suddenly we’re into a whole different thing,” Kenyon explained.

“Injecting that sort of culture around training, not normally on time, which is different. The Brazilian health culture, different. Fantastic player, but there’s all sorts of other things that started to get introduced into all this, and he was clearly coming with a load of people. 

“You know what United was like at that time. It was an institution, no one got treated differently than the rest. This started to become a bigger issue than the money. We sort of got an agreement with the club, got an agreement with the player, but we came back and said, ‘On balance, I don’t think this is [right]’. David [Beckham] had just moved on and part of that noise was around the environment.”

Beckham’s star had risen so high by that point in his career that he was increasingly butting heads with Sir Alex Ferguson, ultimately leading to the player’s departure, so it’s understandable why recruiting a player who had the potential to not fit neatly into the environment could become a worry.

When David Gill, who succeeded Kenyon as chief executive later in 2003 but had already been finance director and deputy CEO, also spoke about the issue with Rio Ferdinand earlier in 2024, he placed more emphasis on Ronaldinho’s personal choice being the key factor.

“I just didn’t get a good vibe,” he said. “I just felt if Barcelona hadn’t have been there we’d have got him. But if Barcelona were there, they were clearly his first choice, a Brazilian going to Barcelona.

“With all due respect notwithstanding the success of Manchester United, they were his first choice. If they hadn’t had come up with the goods, we’d had all of the deal done. The numbers were done. I don’t think it was anything we’d done wrong it was just that Barcelona had come in.”

United’s eventual consolation for not getting Ronaldinho was the cheaper capture of an unknown 18-year-old by the name of Cristiano Ronaldo for £12.24m.

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