Man Utd will regret £30m Birmingham City transfer miss forever | OneFootball

Europe's biggest clubs wanted Jude Bellingham in 2020 and United were among the favourites to sign him. They'll regret missing out on him at leisure.

Manchester United bid £30m for Jude Bellingham in the January 2020 transfer window, but the player ended up going to Borussia Dortmund six months later.

As they survey the wreckage of their worst League season since they were relegated in 1974, Manchester United may have many regrets, but it's doubtful that they will have many greater than missing out on this particular player.

Bellingham was just 16 years old when some of Europe's biggest clubs started to circle Birmingham City with an interest in signing him. It was already clear that this was a very special talent indeed.

He was put into the Birmingham first team for the first time in August 2019 for a Carabao Cup match against Portsmouth at the age of just 16 years and 38 days old, after having signed a scholar contract with them that summer. Because of his age, he was still only on £145-a-week at the time that all of this was happening.

United faced strong competition for Bellingham's signature from the outset

By the following January, Bellingham had made 25 appearances for the Blues, and bigger clubs were already starting to circle following rave reviews of his first half-season in the professional game.

But it was Manchester United who showed their hand first, bidding £30m for the mercurial teenager. As reported by The Sun at the time, among the other clubs interested in his signature were Liverpool, Manchester City, Arsenal, Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund.

At that time, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer had been the United manager just over a year, and he'd sought to refocus the club on bringing through more home-grown talent. Bellingham fit that bill, with his versatility as a player only adding to the appeal of taking him to Old Trafford.

But the bid was rejected, and that decision is one that United have been able to regret at leisure in the years since.

Bellingham's decision has subsequently been vindicated

That summer, Bellingham did leave Birmingham, but it wasn't for Old Trafford. In July 2020, he signed for Borussia Dortmund for £25 million with a substantial add-ons package.

Subsequent events have completely justified the decision that he made.

Dortmund's reputation for bringing through young players and improving them had already preceded them by this point, and the same can hardly be said for Manchester United.

He finished his first season in Germany by winning the DFB-Pokal and ended up making 92 Bundesliga appearances for the club over the next three seasons before moving to Real Madrid in 2023 for a transfer fee of €103 million, a fee with the potential to rise by 30% to approximately €134 million due to add-ons. By the end of his first season at the Bernabeu, he'd won both La Liga and the Champions League, as well as being voted La Liga's Player of the Year.

But while Bellingham's career has gone from strength to strength since he left Birmingham, Manchester United have continued to falter.

They're currently on track for their worst League season in more than half a century, a state of affairs which might have been very different, had they been able to tempt Bellingham to Old Trafford in January 2020.