Mbeumo confusion explained by biggest signings made by clubs ‘pushing the train’ to Champions League

Matheus Cunha and Bryan Mbeumo picking this abysmal version of Manchester United over Champions League teams has boggled minds but there is plenty of precedent.

While Cunha has joined from Wolves with little competition for his signature, the revelation that Mbeumo wants to join Manchester United, a team which finished five places lower than the Brentford side for which he scored 20 Premier League goals last season, has confused many.

Newcastle, Spurs and Arsenal were all linked with the Cameroonian forward but it is hardly the first time Manchester United have beaten Champions League clubs to a signing despite having no Champions League football to offer themselves. Plenty of other clubs have managed it too.

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10) Bruno Guimaraes
The spot could just as easily go to Alexander Isak, but Newcastle were at least on an obvious upward trajectory when they shattered their transfer record to sign the Swede from Real Sociedad in August 2022.

The Magpies would qualify for the Champions League at the end of that season, with Isak’s goals a critical factor in helping transform Eddie Howe’s side. Yet it was Guimaraes who boarded the ship when the shore was a speck in the distance.

Newcastle were in the relegation zone below Norwich when they somehow tempted Guimaraes to turn his back on long-term interest from Arsenal, the Brazilian having also popped up on radars at Manchester United and Paris Saint-Germain.

“We are definitely going to be a club that is going to be a big power in world football,” said Guimaraes, and while it seems obvious in hindsight, in the exciting but uncertain post-takeover haze, it was far from guaranteed that Newcastle would embark on a revolution he helped kickstart.

9) Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang
Things did not work out in a way that suited any party. The captain’s armband was stripped, the non-negotiables were ignored, backs were stabbed and the contract Arsenal were desperate for Aubameyang to sign after winning them the FA Cup was written off months early.

Yet for a time there was talk of statues, proof of leadership, the glory of trophies and the scoring of more Premier League goals than Alexis Sanchez in fewer appearances than Philippe Senderos.

It is a truly imperious record for Arsene Wenger’s last signing as a manager. A club-record fee was needed to extract Aubameyang from Borussia Dortmund, the Gabon international departing as the Bundesliga’s Player of the Year in 2016 and Golden Boot winner of 2017. By the time it came to leaving Germany in January 2018, Arsenal were sixth in the Premier League and locked in the existential crisis that was their first year outside the Champions League since 2000.

Aubameyang was supposed to be one of the building blocks placed in the foundation of Arsenal’s recovery; his removal ended up being part of the process in re-establishing their relevance as a force.

8) Sadio Mane
“If a player only wants to come to Man United to play Champions League, then he won’t come. We want players who want to represent United, not players who want to play certain competitions,” Ruben Amorim told Viktor Gyokeres.

Jurgen Klopp ultimately put it best:

“I always tell players if, when you are 35 or 36, you look back on your career and think about the one year you didn’t play Champions League, then you are really a poor boy. There are so many things you can do and reach if you go together with the team. You can qualify for the Champions League, play Champions League, maybe win it or whatever. That is a much more satisfying thing than all the rest. That is what I would say to players: ‘It is about pushing the train, not jumping on a running train.’ That is what we need here. If somebody says: ‘But you don’t play Champions League next year’, then goodbye and thank you, have fun next year wherever you will be. We will find players or we have players already that will go our way. That is not my way, that is the normal way for a club not playing in the Champions League.”

The German did not have to worry about it often, only coaching two full Liverpool seasons outside Europe’s elite competition, but it was true. The Reds signed Sadio Mane 88 days later and Klopp secured one of the strongest pushers of his Champions League train in the process.

Not only were the Reds out of Europe altogether in summer 2016, but they had finished two places below the Southampton side they were buying from. Mane bet not only on himself but the Klopp vision. A Premier League, Champions League, Super Cup, Club World Cup and Golden Boot suggests he was right.

7) Moises Caicedo
Liverpool supporters consumed dangerous and absurd levels of copium to come to terms with Caicedo’s decision to reject them in favour of joining Chelsea in the summer of 2023.

It was understandable to an extent. The Reds, managed by Jurgen Klopp, had just finished seven places higher than the Blues, who were a bastion of instability and player churn. The decision between the two seemed obvious once it was clear both were willing to make it worth Brighton’s trouble.

But players tend not to glance at the most recent league table before making career calls. Caicedo took the most expensive step down in Premier League history and has played a considerable part in pulling Chelsea back up since.

6) Leny Yoro
Real Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain and Liverpool were among those linked but it was Manchester United who completed a genuine transfer coup in signing a player former sporting director Dan Ashworth described as “one of the most exciting young defenders in world football”.

Some will put that down to money, or more specifically the pressure selling club Lille reportedly applied on Yoro to take the more lucrative Manchester United offer.

But for a Europa League club to capture such a coveted teenager was yet more proof of that unique allure Manchester United still possess. Yoro was seven when they had last won the title and still in nappies for their most recent Champions League crowning, yet Old Trafford still called.

5) Luis Suarez
While he would win the Champions League with Barcelona in 2015, Suarez had only graced the competition proper in one season, scoring a solitary goal during the 2010/11 campaign in which Ajax exited at the group stage.

He joined Liverpool later that season and by the time he had finally dragged them to European Cup qualification for the first time in half a decade in 2014, the Uruguayan forewent the fruits of his labour to rock up in Spain.

Liverpool had finished seventh before Suarez joined, then sixth, eighth and seventh with him. But the forward was not tainted by those years of stagnation, scoring more than 50 goals. Among them were his efforts in the Europa League as Suarez netted four times in seven appearances in the 2012/13 season, which ended with him imploring Liverpool “to honour our agreement”, namely:

“Last year I had the opportunity to move to a big European club and I stayed on the understanding that if we failed to qualify for the Champions League the following season I’d be allowed to go.”

The Emirates was smoking to the tune of £1 but Suarez caught fire in 2013/14, rocketing Liverpool to a Premier League title tilt that faded in spectacular fashion for a runners-up medal. He left for Barcelona instead of sticking around long enough for Brendan Rodgers to put him on the bench at the Bernabeu.

4) Zlatan Ibrahimovic
From his humble beginnings at Ajax in 2002/03 to the understated modesty that helped steer Paris Saint-Germain in 2015/16, Ibrahimovic did not miss a single Champions League campaign. He played at least six games in every season including and between those two quarter-final appearances, failing to score only when Igor Biscan belittled him in 2004/05.

But it was neither injury nor under-performance that snapped that remarkable streak. Ibrahimovic instead vacated his seat at the European top table entirely of his own accord – by joining Manchester United.

Louis van Gaal had sidestepped the first sign of the Pardpocalypse by quelling any Wembley dad dancing in the FA Cup final. The Dutchman also took Manchester United to within goal difference of the Champions League places but that was not enough and so Jose Mourinho was appointed. One of his first moves was to orchestrate the arrival of Ibrahimovic, who proceeded to talk the considerable talk while actually walking the quite brilliant walk.

But the significant knee knack he suffered in the Europa League quarter-final meant he would play only one Champions League game for Manchester United. He holds the record of most different clubs represented in the European Cup at seven, even if his solitary match in the competition for the Red Devils was as a second-half substitute in defeat to Basel.

3) N’Golo Kante
A peculiar set of circumstances meant the £30m departure of the midfielder most vital to a Premier League title win for a team that had finished 10th passed by without much consternation or controversy.

Leicester resigned themselves to the idea that Kante would be the first noteworthy cab off the King Power rank and Chelsea duly obliged after Arsenal pulled out of the running over seemingly extortionate agent fees.

Kante thus had to wait until September 2017 for his first taste of the Champions League, missing out on Leicester’s journey to the quarter-final the previous year and instead busying himself winning a consecutive Premier League title. The Frenchman would claim his European Cup by 2021 as man of the match in the final, cementing a legacy of making up for lost time and receiving the ultimate award for what was quite the leap of faith five years previous.

Chelsea were out of European competition completely but still signed the epitome of a Champions League calibre player as Kante called “the opportunity to work with Antonio Conte, a brilliant coach… simply too good to turn down”.

It is unknown if he felt the same way about Frank Lampard.

2) Angel di Maria
He was an ill fit, a ‘complete fanny’, the polar opposite to what his manager sought and emblematic of a period during which the club favoured style over substance in the transfer market. Manchester United made a loss on Di Maria less than a year after his purchase for good reason.

But it was a monumental capture at the time, albeit a flexing of superficial muscles to stroke an ego bruised by one failed post-Sir Alex Ferguson season. Manchester United finished the 2013/14 campaign in seventh and under the caretaker guidance of Ryan Giggs; Di Maria ended it as man of the match in the Champions League final and leading assist provider in La Liga with 18, having scored in a Copa del Rey final win over Barcelona.

The closest he ever got to playing European football for the Red Devils was the trip to lose 2-1 to Swansea in February 2015 before departing for Paris Saint-Germain that August.

1) Paul Pogba
The world-record fee was used as a stick with which critics could relentlessly beat the haircut out of Pogba. His reign as the most expensive footballer ever lasted a solitary year before Neymar made the £89.3m Manchester United paid Juventus look like a Willian Prunier clean sheet bonus. Yet often forgotten is one of the many wrinkles in that deal: the pull of home, Mourinho or infuriating Graeme Souness on a weekly basis persuaded one of the best young players around to abandon a recent Champions League finalist and serial Serie A title winner for whatever state Van Gaal left Old Trafford in.

It was believed at the time that Real Madrid were the favourites – proving one immutable transfer truth – but when Los Blancos withdrew from the race over money, it was time to dust off Stormzy for the unveiling.

From December 2015 to September 2017, Manchester United’s last chapter in their estimable European Cup history was to bring on Nick Powell against Wolfsburg. In between, they spent more on a player than any team ever before. Pogba remains the last player to open the scoring in a winning continental final for the club, putting Ajax to the Europa League sword to ensure Champions League qualification for a club that finished seven points off fourth in his first season.

Pogba had his pick of clubs as a precocious and prodigious 23-year-old; both he and Manchester United might choose differently if given the option again.

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