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Former United assistant coach reveals his pursuit of a teenaged Mbappe after a tip-off from a French scout.
One of the world’s most prolific goal scorers, Kylian Mbappe, could have signed a contract with Manchester United when he was a little-known teenager in the French league, but the English Premier League club’s scouts decided against approaching his then-club, Monaco, former United player and coach Ryan Giggs has revealed.
Giggs, who was United’s interim and assistant coach between 2014 and 2016, made the revelation on a podcast with his former United teammate Rio Ferdinand on Wednesday
Mbappe has several club and international goal-scoring records to his name and now plays for European football giants Real Madrid in Spain.
The 27-year-old signed for the La Liga team in 2024 from French league champions Paris Saint-Germain, who scooped him up from Monaco in 2018 after Mbappe lit up Ligue 1 with his speed and goal-scoring accuracy.
But according to Giggs, Mbappe could have been a Red Devil had the club’s scouts pursued him after watching him play in 2015.
The United legend said he was in southern France in 2015 when he was approached by a local football scout and tipped off about a rising star.
“I was walking along the beach back to the hotel and all of a sudden I can feel someone coming up to me,” Giggs said while narrating his meeting with the scout.
“He comes up to me and says, ‘I just wanted to just say hello. I’m a big United fan and 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 Mbappe. He’s at Monaco and I think he’s a player for Man United.’”
According to Giggs, who was manager Louis van Gaal’s assistant coach at the time, the scout then asked for his email address and wrote to him a few weeks later with details about Mbappe.
It prompted Giggs and fellow United assistant coach Albert Stuivenberg to watch Mbappe play in Monaco’s youth team, only to be taken aback by Mbappe’s brilliance.
“We were just like, ‘Wow! What is this?’,” the former winger recalled.
“You see players and they can be special, and he [Mbappe] did look exceptional.”
The two assistant managers then asked United’s scouting team to watch him, but they never ended up pursuing the player who went on to become a world champion and two-time FIFA Golden Boot award winner with France.
“Someone in France [from the scouting team] went to watch him when Monaco were playing PSG in Paris,” Giggs carried on. “A few weeks later I said to this guy, ‘How did it go?’ He went, ‘Yeah, they weren’t too sure about him.’ So I just went, ‘All right, OK.’ And that was it.”
Mbappe’s career took off a year after United’s failure to pursue him, as the then-16-year-old scored 26 goals in 44 appearances for Monaco in their French title-winning 2016-17 season, including six in their run to the UEFA Champions League semifinals.
The teen sensation was loaned to PSG in the following season before securing a permanent move in the 2018-19 season. He went on to score 256 goals in 308 appearances for the French champions, winning the Ligue 1 title six times.
The France national team captain won the World Cup in 2018 in Russia and finished runners-up to Argentina four years later in Qatar, where he scored a hat-trick in the final and won his first Golden Boot Award.
