Ferguson: We Offered £30m For Benzema And Met With Bayern Over Ribery

Sir Alex Ferguson has revealed that Manchester United offered £30m to sign Karim Benzema before he opted to join Real Madrid, as well as contacting Bayern Munich in regards to Franck Ribery back in March.

“We tried for Benzema because, at 21, I felt there would be an improvement there,” said Ferguson. “He is tough, with a good physique and goalscoring record, so it was worth going a wee bit extra for him because of his age. But when it went to 42m euros, it was beyond his value. We went to 35m and I think that was fair. We explored signing Franck Ribery in a nice, quiet way when David Gill was at one of his meetings with Bayern Munich in March. They told him: ‘Absolutely no chance’ and the one thing you can say about Bayern is that when they say something they mean it.”

Interesting. I’m pretty sure Bayern said the same about Owen Hargreaves…